What we have in Common
by Vampire-Badger
Summary: In one world a misthios named Kassandra lives on the island of Kephallonia, waiting for a chance to escape. In the world next door a misthios named Alexios lives the exact same life. The one point of contact between them is their eagle, Ikaros, who travels back and forth between them-and eventually they figure that out. AU set pre-game, with spoilers up through leaving Kephallonia
1. Chapter 1

**So this is a story that came about because it took me six hours (EACH) of playing both characters to decide which one I wanted to go with (I eventually decided on Kassandra for the record, because apparently she's canon? Which is why she has slightly more POV time here than Alexios).**

 **Anyway, I like both of them, I wanted to write both of them, so here we are! And just to be super extremely clear about where the spoilers are because I know this is a new game, you should have seen three flashbacks before reading this.**

 **-/-**

Ikaros has a mind of his own. He always has, ever since he first landed next to Kassandra on the night—

On _that_ night.

It's a little ironic, maybe, that the bird everyone knows her by is still a total mystery to her. Kassandra doesn't know why Ikaros has fixed himself on following her, doesn't know why or how she can… see, as he does, through his eyes. And in particular, she doesn't know where it is he goes when he's not with her. There are days, sometimes whole weeks, when Ikaros is gone. Just gone! He always comes back in the end, usually just when she's given up on him.

When she was younger, Kassandra used to be glad when he was gone. He reminded her of things she was still learning how to forget. Now, with all those memories safely buried in the past, locked far away where they don't get in the way anymore, she's starting to actually miss Ikaros when he's gone. And with that, it's really starting to bother her that she still doesn't know _why_ or _where_ he's going.

Her first clue comes when she realizes that someone else has been training Ikaros when he's gone. It's almost an accidental realization, and it comes one hot summer afternoon when she's not even thinking of Ikaros. She's with Phoibe, trading tall stories in the vague shade of Kassandra's roof, because it's simply too hot to go anywhere or do anything.

Kassandra has her arm out in front of her, gesturing as she talks, hiding a smile while Phoibe rolls with laughter. And then Ikaros comes to her, lands on her arm, and gives her a look that says quite clearly that he's expecting a reward for coming to her like this, on command, even if she doesn't realize she's given the command.

"Who taught you to do that?" she asks, because Ikaros has never done this before—he usually likes to stay near but not with her, a little distance away.

There are times when Kassandra swears she knows what the eagle is thinking, but this is evidently not one of those times. Ikaros only gives her a hard, skeptical look, then flies away with an aggravated screech. Kassandra watches him, nonplussed, until Phoibe breaks the silence.

"Do you think," she says. "That if I'm really nice to Ikaros, Zeus might send me an eagle too?"

Kassandra doesn't answer.

"Kassandra?" Phoibe prompts.

She snaps herself out of it, shaking her head. "Never mind, Phoibe."

"So no eagle for me?" Phoibe asks, in the voice of someone that has already given up any rational hope of life getting better, and is left with nothing but prayers.

"Phoibe," Kassandra says, like she has a hundred times before. "You know he's just a bird." But as she says it, she's… doubting. Just a bird, yes, but a bird that lets her see more than she should, and now a bird with secrets.

-/-

Alexios has never thought to wonder where Ikaros goes when he vanishes for days at a time. He's a bird, and not even a trained one at that. Well, not _really_ trained, anyway. Alexios has been trying, but so far all he's managed to do is teach the eagle to land on his arm. He's too stubborn for anything else.

And anyway, if Ikaros wants to disappear for days at a time, then why shouldn't he? He assumes Ikaros is out hunting, or whatever else it is that birds do. He never thinks to question this until Ikaros comes back one day with a message for him. Alexios is with Markos, trying to stay interested as the older man explains his latest scheme. Mostly, Alexios is just waiting for Markos to get to the point where he explains why they (meaning, Alexios) need to do something (meaning, kill/steal/fight) to benefit them (meaning, Markos). He already knows he'll do whatever Markos asks, because there's just nothing else _to_ do on this tiny backwater island, and no one else to work _for_ after so many years making enemies on Markos's behalf.

"Alexios!" Markos says, with all his usual enthusiasm, interrupting his chain of thought. "Your bird brought a message.

"What?" Alexios hasn't even noticed Ikaros is back—he's been gone close to three days, but he's been gone much longer in the past. He knows the eagle will come back when he's good and ready. "A message?"

Markos points, and sure enough when Alexios holds out an arm for Ikaros to land on, the eagle is holding one leg awkwardly because of the tube tied tightly to it. Not too large or too heavy for Ikaros to fly, but if he's outraged expression is anything to go on he's definitely annoyed by it. When Alexios unties the message tube, Ikaros digs his claws into his arm and then flies off in a huff. He doesn't go far—Alexios is still vaguely aware of his presence, like a weight in the back of his mind, when Ikaros settles in the branches of a nearby tree.

"What does it say?" Markos asks, as Alexios unfolds the note.

Alexios takes the time to read, squinting at the cramped writing, before answering. "It's from someone claiming that Ikaros belongs to _her_ ," he says at last. "And she wants to know who I am." His expression darkens, just a fraction. "Who _I_ am? Who is _she_?"

"Well, she must have said," Markos points out. "Or you wouldn't know she's a she, would you?"

"It's signed Kassandra," Alexios says. "I don't know any Kassandra, do you?" The name itself is like a knife to the gut, of course. He's never going to forget the sound of his sister's screaming cries as she was dropped off the edge of the cliff, and he's never been able to hear her name without a part of him going back to that night. He's never told Markos though, never told anyone, and through sheer determination he stops his voice from shaking now.

"No," Markos says. Alexios can tell he's getting bored of the conversation, which means he's decided he can't make any money off of it. Still, he does ask, "Are you going to write back?"

"No," Alexios says. Then, "Yes. I… think I will."

If nothing else, Alexios feels like he needs to set this unknown Kassandra straight. If she thinks she owns Ikaros, she's in for a rude awakening—Ikaros is his own creature, and he doesn't belong to anyone.

As Markos starts up talking again, winding his way with painful slowness toward the point, Alexios can't help feeling a little bit jealous of that freedom.

-/-

The next time Kassandra sees Ikaros, the eagle has a new note and a long suffering expression that means he's accepted his new role as messenger, but with ill grace. She feeds him a scrap of food, which mollifies him somewhat before he flies away. Kassandra is smiling when she unfurls the note.

She is _not_ smiling when she reads it.

And when she storms into Markos's home five minutes later, she is downright angry. "Is this true?" she asks, thrusting the paper in his face. "Have you been working with a misthios called Alexios?" She isn't sure which idea scares her more. That Markos has been lying to her—and if he's lying about this, then what else could he be lying about—or that someone out there knows this much about her. They're taunting her, showing her they know all about her, about the man she works for, even about her dead baby brother. They'd signed with Alexios's _name_.

 _Come see Markos on Kephallonia_ , the message had said. _Everyone knows him, and I work for him—he can point you to me_. And there at the end, the name _Alexios_.

"No," Markos says. " _No_ , Kassandra, I—"

She's not in the mood for him right now. "Markos, I swear, if you're not telling the truth I will hurt you. You know I can."

"Kassandra!" Genuine alarm now. Maybe he believes she actually would hurt him, or maybe he's just not used to seeing her this angry. "You _know_ I don't know this Alexios. You know everyone I know!"

Kassandra forces herself to breathe. It's true. She does. She's collected debts on Markos's behalf from more or less every person he's ever met. She shakes her head hard and backs down. "Fine, Markos," she says. "I believe you. But I need to know—" A pause. An idea occurs to her. "I need to find out who sent this.

"How are you going to do that?"

But Kassandra doesn't answer. Her idea is growing, and by the time she's tracked down Phoibe and brought her back home, the idea has evolved into more than that. It is now a Very Bad Plan.

"Kassandra, what are you doing?" Phoibe asks, when they are safely inside. "What's wrong?"

She must look so much more intense than she means to. She doesn't want to scare her. "Phoibe," Kassandra says. "Listen, you know who you're always asking about Ikaros?"

Excitement flares in Phoibe's eyes. "But you always say he's _just an eagle_ ," she says, leaning forward like she already knows what Kassandra is going to say, and she is so, so ready for it.

"Well, he's not from Zeus," Kassandra says. "But."

Phoibe nods. "But?" she asks eagerly.

"But…" She hates giving Phoibe this hope, because she knows this isn't how the world works. Hope… isn't something a girl on her own in Kephallonia should allow herself to have. Kassandra has never told anyone else that she can see what Ikaros sees, because they'll think she's crazy. But she's never told Phoibe, because she knows Phoibe will believe her. "When I send Ikaros out ahead of me to scout—you've seen me do that, right?"

"Yes," Phoibe says.

"I do that because I can see what he sees," Kassandra says slowly. "He lets me look through his eyes."

 _Phoibe's_ eyes are now so wide they look like they're about to fall out of her head. "You—fly?" she asks.

"Sort of," Kassandra says. "It's close enough."

"And you never told me!" Phoibe says. Kassandra can't tell if she's impressed or annoyed.

"I'm telling you now," Kassandra says. "Because—Phoibe, I need your help."

Which drains the annoyance right out of Phoibe. "With what?" she asks.

Ah. Now this is going to be the hard part. Kassandra isn't going to tell Phoibe how terrifying it is for someone else to know her brother's name, or why she needs to find out how they learned it. "Ikaros has been flying off to see someone else," she says, which is part of the truth at least. "I need to find out who it is."

"Someone's taking your eagle away?"

"Ikaros is his own creature, Phoibe," Kassandra says. The note Ikaros had brought her had said that, too, and she agrees with the letter writer about that much, at least. "I don't own him. But… I do want to know where he's been going, at least. So I'm going to go with Ikaros the next time he leaves. So I can see this person myself, through Ikaros. When I do that, I won't be able to focus on things here, or protect myself. I don't know how long I'll be, so I need you to keep other people away from here. Just in case."

"I can do that," Phoibe says excitedly. "This is so great, Kassandra!"

Kassandra smiles thinly. She doesn't think so. But Phoibe doesn't know about Alexios, and maybe she would feel differently if it was the name of one of her dead parents signed to that note—

She feels terrible about the thought as soon as she has it. "Thank you for helping," she says. "I couldn't do this without you, Phoibe. Really."

Phoibe puffs herself up with pride.

"And don't tell anyone," Kassandra adds.

"I won't," Phoibe says. "I promise."

And then, with a sense of dramatic timing that just seems absolutely typical of him, Ikaros flies in through the open window and lands on Kassandra's forearm. "Is this your way of telling me you're ready to go?" she asks the eagle, raising her eyebrows.

Ikaros screeches in response, which Kassandra interprets as a yes. She takes a deep breath, and makes herself comfortable. She lies down on the floor, trying not to feel awkward about Phoibe just watching her. Sometimes Ikaros is gone for days, and she has no idea how long this is going to take. She closes her eyes, focuses on Ikaros, and lets her awareness of her own body fade to close to nothing.

Ikaros flaps his wings a few times to get them out of the window and into the open air, then spreads them out lazily to soar along with a breeze. Kassandra watches the familiar landscape spread out below her, letting Ikaros take control. He screeches again, a long and almost joyful sound, and then starts to fly higher. Kassandra tries to rack where they're going, but then they pass through a sort of golden haze that reminds Kassandra in a weird way of her spear. It's not entirely—not entirely visible, almost not entirely real, but when they come out of it eventually, she's completely lost track.

Then Ikaros stars to fly downward again. Kassandra isn't sure what she's expecting, but it's not for Ikaros to just… fly home again. A sweeping sort of disappointment runs through her, but before she can even think of leaving Ikaros and going back to her own mind, she notices something.

There's a man on her roof, sitting in the shade, with one leg stretched out in front of him as he cleans an unimpressive sword. He looks so comfortable and completely at home there, that Kassandra's first, outraged reaction of _what is he doing at my house_ is replaced almost immediately with an odd feeling of not belonging there herself.

Ikaros flies low, and without stopping or slowing he streaks straight through the open window to the room where Kassandra herself is lying.

Isn't lying.

 _Is_ lying. She knows she's still there, she's still vaguely aware of her body and she knows it hasn't been moved. And yet… here is Ikaros, flying down to the exact space where Kassandra knows she is still lying and yet, somehow, it's empty. Ikaros lands and stands there, cleaning his feathers, as if to show off to Kassandra just how badly she's failing to understand what's going on.

She can't stop herself from feeling slightly exasperated by this. There are times when Ikaros is just the most irritating person she knows, even if technically he's not a person at all. Kassandra feels her body, wherever it is, take a deep breath, and she forces her mind to focus. So there's… two versions of the same place. And in one of them she's lying on the floor with Phoibe watching over her, and in the other one, a stranger is sitting on the roof like he owns the place.

This is insane.

It's not that much long after she reaches this (probably obvious to him) conclusion that Ikaros gets tired of his preening and flies back outside. He goes straight to the man still sitting on the roof, who makes a faint clicking noise with his tongue and holds his arm out expectantly. When Ikaros lands on it, Kassandra realizes that this must be the man that trained him to do that, and also therefore the man who wrote to her and signed his name Alexios.

"There you are," the man—Alexios—says. He runs a finger over Ikaros's head, smoothing his feathers. "Markos has another job for us." His voice holds the same flat tone Kassandra uses when Markos has been more than usually annoying, a tone that implies he must know him well. Only—Markos had said he didn't know an Alexios.

But what if, a voice in the back of her mind whispers. What if, there are two of Markos the same way you are and aren't lying inside this house right now?

The thought is ridiculous at first, but then the realization hits her like a blow to the head. There _can_ be two of Markos. There can be two of everything. Ikaros has flown her into another world.

-/-

It's a little while, more than a week in fact, before Alexios hears from Kassandra again. He's almost stopped looking when finally Ikaros comes to him with the new message. He lands on his shoulder and starts to immediately and impatiently wave one leg in front of his face.

"What's wrong with Ikaros?" Phoibe asks. She's sitting on a low, crumbling wall and eating most of Alexios's lunch. Alexios had grumbled a little at first, just for the record, but he has a strong suspicion that she hasn't eaten in a while.

"Nothing's wrong with Ikaros," he says, slipping the message tube off before she can see it.

"He looks like he's trying to dance," Phoibe says doubtfully.

"Maybe he wants my lunch," Alexios says.

"I think you mean _my_ lunch," Phoibe says, but she holds some food up for Ikaros. She's distracted enough that Alexios feels safe unfolding Kassandra's message and reading it there and then. It's short and to the point, but… odd.

 _If you can do what I think you can, go with Ikaros the next time he leaves. -Kassandra_

It takes him a little while to figure it out, because there's no way she could be talking about—there's no way she could _know_ how he sees what Ikaros sees. But the more he thinks about it, the more it makes sense. If he wants to find out who Kassandra is—which he does, he is thoroughly curious now—why not see her for himself, through Ikaros?

He considers this for a few more seconds, turning the rolled up message over and over between his fingers. Then he turns to Phoibe and says, "I need your help with something."

And Phoibe, it turns out, is more than happy to help him out once he's explained about Ikaros, and how he needs someone to watch over him while he's with the eagle. If anything, Ikaros is the one that needs a little bit of convincing. Alexios has to bribe him with half a smoked fish before Ikaros will agree to go anywhere with him.

He's half expecting something to go wrong, because after all these days—weeks now, really—of wondering who she is, it can't be this easy, can it? But nothing goes wrong as he lays down and focuses on Ikaros, as the eagle takes off, flying higher and higher, as he starts to fly downward again…

Kassandra (he assumes it's Kassandra, because all this is starting to have an almost story like feel. Not quite real, just… real enough) is waiting for Ikaros, sitting on a large, flat rock on one of Kephallonia's quieter beaches. Barely a scrap of sand really, bordered by cliffs and too much effort for most people to get to. It's quiet.

"Did you bring him with you?" Kassandra asks, as Ikaros lands on her arm. Alexios can't help feeling slightly hurt at this—petty, maybe, but he's never seen Ikaros come to anyone but him before. He won't even got to Phoibe, or Markos, and he knows them well by now. Then the pettiness passes, and the full impact of her words hit him. _Did you bring him with you_. She's asking about him.

Ikaros looks her right in the eye and makes a soft noise. He seems almost tired, or sad, and Kassandra gives him a sad smile in return.

"Well," she says. "Let's see." And then she tips her head back, and goes very still. Alexios waits, not quite sure what's supposed to happen next, until he feels something new brush against his mind. It's… close to what he feels with Ikaros when he's watching the world through the eagle's eyes, but too human to be Ikaros.

 _Alexios,_ the presence says, and it clicks.

 _Kassandra?_ he answers. Back in the place where he'd left his body, he can feel a slight smile tugging at his expression. He hadn't expected this at all.

 _I thought this might work,_ she says, as Ikaros—clearly uninterested in the two human minds riding alongside him—flaps his wings and takes flight.

Alexios watches the world roll out below them like a map, then finally says, _Why? I've never met anyone else that could do this before._

 _I tried it before,_ Kassandra explains. _And I saw you, living my life._

Your _life?_ Alexios asks. _What does that mean?_

She explains, briefly. How they live in the same place, know the same people, have the same friends—how she'd realized they live in two separate worlds, mirror images of each other. Alexios doesn't have a hard time believing her. In an odd way, it makes sense from what he's seen. And in an odder way, he can feel that she's telling the truth, or at least that she believes she is.

At last, he says, _I have… had. I had a baby sister named Kassandra._

She's quiet for a while before saying, _I had a baby brother called Alexios. He died._

An understanding passes between them, that they are not quite the same, but in some way that doesn't fully make sense they _are_.

 _We should…_ he's not quite sure how to say it. Kassandra, this Kassandra, isn't his sister. His sister had died, along with her brother, but this Kassandra is here, and alive, and she understands in a way that no one else ever could. _Do this again._

 _Definitely,_ Kassandra says.

Between them, Ikaros gives a long screech, and goes into a dive.

 **-/-**

 **I am 92% sure there's going to be more of this, because I can already see a few later scenes in the game where I would love to see misthios-Alexios and misthios-Kassandra interact. I'll put spoiler warnings at the top of each chapter.**

 **ALSO: if anyone has played through the end of sequence 3 as Alexios, please let me know. I need to know if a name is the same in both playthroughs before I can get the next chapter written.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Spoiler warning for this chapter-you should have met a character called Deimos before reading this. End of sequence 3, I think.**

 **(Also sorry if this seems a bit sappy, I was in need of some sap after playing this part)**

 **-/-**

Kassandra has never imagined her life would lead to this. A month ago she'd been on Kephallonia, learning to communicate with a man who is but isn't really her brother, by way of an eagle that flies between realities and can, when they want, take their minds with them. And actually, when she thinks about it like that, maybe she should have seen the snake cult coming.

And yet here she is, dressed in the robes and mask she'd stolen off Elpenor, infiltrating a shadowy cult filled with the worst kinds of people she can manage, and still somehow totally surprised by how quickly her life has careened out of her control. She does not want to be here, or be involved with these people at all. Kassandra is a misthios, and used to blood and death, but these are the kind of people that _enjoy_ it.

Underground, suffocated by the robes and the mask and the sheer weight of stone above her, Kassandra reaches instinctively for Ikaros. He's distant in a way that means he's with Alexios, in his world. Kassandra knows she can still reach him while he's there (she and Alexios have been practicing, and as hard as it is to send their minds from one world to another, they _can_ both do it by now), but she needs her mind here and fully focused.

It's just that she wants _out_ of here so badly. The whispers of the cult are starting to make her physically sick. The people here think in a way that just doesn't make any _sense_ to her. She watches them cut open their hands to drip blood into a bowl, watches them brand each other as punishment and as entertainment, watches the empty eyes in their masks, and she wonders how much more she _can_ watch before she just runs screaming out of here.

The cultists are waiting for someone called Deimos. Kassandra isn't exactly sure what he is to them—the cultists themselves don't seem to know. They talk about him like he's their leader, but when Kassandra asks they seem to think the idea of him being in charge is funny. It's a curious, but not very helpful, reaction, and Kassandra still doesn't really know anything about Deimos, except… well, she knows that he terrifies them. That much, at least, is clear—the anxiety she can feel, thick in the air, is all centered on him.

 _Where is Deimos?_ they whisper. _Why is he so late, what happened, what went wrong?_ And always, always in the background, _who is he going to blame when he gets here?_

The tension mounts, almost unbearable on top of Kassandra's existing worry that she'll be found out, and her disgust at all these things she's overhearing. She's going to explode, she's going to actually burst into pieces if something doesn't happen soon to break the horrible tension. She wishes she had her weapons, her spear especially. If she didn't feel so horribly defenseless, she'd be able to cope with this better.

Over and over, Kassandra keeps reminding herself that she just has to wait until Deimos comes. She'll learn more about what the cult is after, and then get out of here as quickly as she can.

And then, finally, Deimos does arrive. She realizes he's arrived the same moment that everyone else does—there's a tremendous crash from behind them, where they'd all come in, and a wordless shout of anger.

"Deimos," someone close to her whispers. It's half a prayer and half an expression of pure fear, and Kassandra barely hears it. She knows that voice, and she knows before she turns around who it is she's going to see.

-/-

Alexios's first thought is that the woman he's looking at is Kassandra. His second thought, hot on the heels of the first, is that it's not Kassandra, he knows Kassandra, and he honestly doesn't think she's capable of the kind of rage he's seeing now on this woman's face. It's only after those first two, instinctive reactions have passed that Alexios starts to slowly reason his way through what he's seeing. This Kassandra looks younger. Eight or nine years younger than the one that shares Ikaros with him, so she's the age… his sister, his real sister, the one that belongs to this world, she would have been exactly that age right now.

Watching his sister stamp and growl, Alexios finds himself reaching almost instinctively for Ikaros. More and more over the past few weeks, it's become a kind of comfort thing. As everyone and everything around him is changing, as he loses _everything_ that's familiar, only Ikaros is constant, and only Kassandra understands. She's going through the same things he is, she's dealing with the exact… the exact same… thing.

So does that mean she's coming face to face with her brother now? Another Alexios? He hopes not. He's not even close to being able to deal with that.

The thought is there and then gone again as Alexios focuses o his own situation. He knows Kassandra is more than capable of taking care of herself, so he needs to focus on the here and now. And, if he's being honest, his knowledge of what Kassandra (normal, uncorrupted-by-a-snake-death-cult Kassandra) is capable of is not making Alexios feel better about this raging, cultist version in front of him. He bites his lip to keep from making a sound, and for the first time feels grateful for the mask he's wearing. His expression would give him away as an imposter in a second.

What happens next, happens in a sort of fog. Alexios can't make himself focus on Kassandra-who-is-Deimos at all. She's so… impossible. Not just because she should be dead, but because she's so different from the Kassandra he knows. He can't look at her familiar face with that alien expression, without part of his mind threatening to shut down in protest.

Alexios is vaguely aware of Kassandra—Deimos—ranting like a petulant child. Assuming, of course, that the child in question is armed to the teeth and terrifyingly insane. He doesn't really manage to start paying attention again until he realizes something is happening with the pyramid shaped artifact in the center of the gathering. He'd wondered about it before when he first came in, but now it looks like he's going to find out what it actually does.

Deimos grabs a cultist, apparently at random. Alexios watches her hold the man's hand up to the pyramid for a long, painful looking moment, then lets it drop. "Go," she says, a growl more than a word. "You." And again, she grabs a cultist and slams her hand against the fragile looking pyramid. Alexios half expects the artifact will shatter, but against all odds it holds firm. The cultist's posture is stiff—she's holding herself as far away from Deimos as she can get—and she only relaxes when Deimos lets go of her hand. "Go," she says for a second time.

Then she reaches out again, and this time she grabs Alexios. "You," she says, and there's nothing Alexios can do to stop her from dragging him over to the artifact. She's using it to… test people, somehow, to see who killed Elpenor. He's picked up on that much at least, although he's not sure how it's supposed to work. If it does, though, if it really does what it looks like it's supposed to, Deimos is going to figure out pretty quickly that he's the guilty one. On the other hand, if he tries to fight, it's going to be obvious immediately that he's guilty.

Also, he's pretty sure that he'd _lose_ that fight. One on one with Deimos, she'd kill him.

Deimos slams Alexios's hand into the artifact. It's cold under his palm but _burns_ its way up his arm, up through the inside of his arm, grabbing at things he doesn't want to give it. His vision flashes and he sees words in a language he doesn't know, then memories. Not of Elpenor, but of his childhood, in Sparta, with baby Kassandra. He is still vaguely aware of Deimos next to him with her hand on his, and all these memories pouring out of him and into her.

It takes only seconds, but it _feels_ like time has just stopped, and this is never going to end. Alexios can hear his breathing echoing inside his mask, and when he finally manages to look up—for just a moment, it's like looking into a warped, broken mirror. Across from him, he sees another person in robes and a mask, identical to his—half there but not really present. Alexios knows without knowing how that he's seeing through the gap between worlds, somehow looking at Kassandra. She's being forced up against the artifact the same way that he is, palm pressed flat against it by someone standing at her side.

He forces himself to turn his head, to see the man standing next to Kassandra. He knows what he's going to see already, but it's still a shock when he sees another version of himself, as twisted and broken as Deimos. He can only manage to look at his doppelganger's face for a blink before forcing his gaze back to Kassandra. He can _feel_ her pain and confusion now, as clearly as if they were both with Ikaros. And then he says "Kassandra" just as she says _"Alexios_ ," and he's not sure which one either of them are talking to.

Deimos pulls his hand away. The vision of Kassandra's world goes up in smoke and Alexios reels back, wondering how much she'd seen and what she's going to do about it.

Her expression is unreadable as she looks down at him (he knows for a fact that he's taller than Kassandra but _Deimos_? She makes him feel tiny). "Get out of here," she says, in a voice closer to normal than anything he's heard from her so far. Then she turns her attention to the next cultist—Alexios hears her screaming his guilt and beating him to death behind him as he hurries away.

-/-

Kassandra hasn't cried since the day she saw her brother thrown over a cliff. Maybe it's only logical, then, that she's crying now that he's alive again. There's a river of tears trapped between her face and her stolen mask, and when she pulls it off at last the night air feels cold against her wet cheeks. She stumbles through a conversation with Herodotus, barely thinking about anything expect her need to get her things (especially her spear, she needs her spear) and get out of here.

It's not until she's called her horse and ridden well away that Kassandra realizes something is wrong. She just… needs to talk. And that's new to her, she's never _needed_ to talk like this to anyone before, but now all she can think of is getting to Alexios. He's gotten under her skin and into her life and after seeing what she knows they _both_ just saw…

She's not in the safest of places right now, but Kassandra reigns her horse in anyway, and finds the best bit of shelter she can manage, a little cave slightly off the road. There, she settles in and closes her eyes, and does what she always does when she wants to talk to Alexios. She goes to him through Ikaros.

The eagle is still with him, in his world, so it takes effort to force her mind toward them. A little like shoving herself through a hole that's the wrong shape. Kassandra's had practice, though, and in a minute or so she's with Ikaros. She blinks, adjusting, and takes in the scene. Ikaros is perched on a wide flat rock in the middle of what looks like woods not far from where the cultists had met. Alexios sits next to the bird, turned slightly away.

He's crying, Kassandra sees. Bent over on the rock, one hand over his face as if to hide the tears, the other clenched into a fist on his lap. His shoulders are shaking visibly, and every once in a while she hears a strained gasp from behind his hand.

A completely understandable reaction. After all, Kassandra had cried herself when she first got out of that cave, it's the kind of thing that would break anyone into pieces. Even Ikaros seems more subdued than he usually does. Kassandra almost thinks that might be her imagination, but then Ikaros makes a soft chirping noise and butts his head gently up against Alexios's fist. He doesn't stop until the man's hand slowly uncurls to stroke the bird's head. He lowers his other hand from his face, and offers a lopsided smile at Ikaros.

Come on, Kassandra wants to tell him. I need to talk to you.

She can't say it, of course, but it doesn't take all that long for Alexios to figure it out. "You brought Kassandra, didn't you?"

Ikaros chirps, and a wet smile spreads itself across Alexios's face. "Good," he says, which is oddly reassuring to hear. She hasn't been worried that he would blame her for the kind of person his sister is, but… well, alright. Maybe she _has_ been sort of worried.

Ikaros takes flight, and Kassandra mentally moves over, making room for Alexios. For a long moment, as their eagle takes flight and wheels his way over the countryside, both are quiet. Then Alexios gives a kind of half laugh.

 _So,_ he says. _How was your day?_

It's such a magnificent understatement that it sort of actually manages to take the tension away. _Not good,_ Kassandra says solemnly. _And it doesn't look like yours was any better._

 _So you did see that,_ Alexios says.

 _The four of us standing around that artifact?_ Kassandra asks. _Yes_.

 _Hmm._ His tone is steady, but since Kassandra can feel how worried he is, it doesn't mean much.

 _What?_ she asks. _What's wrong?_

 _Do you think they saw?_ Alexios asks. _Deimos, and… whatever yours is called?_

It takes her a second to process this, if only because she's not ready to think of him as _hers_ yet. She's not sure if she's ready to take ownership or responsibility of her brother like that. Eventually, she pulls herself together. _Mine's called Deimos too,_ she says.

 _Well that's going to get confusing,_ Alexios says.

The least of their problems. _I guess they might have seen,_ she says. That would be… bad, more than likely. Kassandra is never going to forget what it was like to see all four of them gathered around the artifact, an army of cultists surrounding them. She'd been an inch away from the woman she _could have been_ , if absolutely everything in her life had gone wrong. Trapped between that woman and her brother, Kassandra had looked up and over the artifact to see Alexios, and she hadn't needed to see his face to know he understood the full horror of the situation.

It's a moment she knows she'll be going back to in her nightmares.

 _Maybe they didn't, though_ , Alexios says. _Deimos didn't act like she saw._

 _Can you imagine,_ Kassandra says. _How bad it would be if they could talk to each other the way we can?_

At this, Alexios actually laughs. There's no real humor in it, but it is a laugh. _Luckily for us,_ he says. _That's never going to happen. Two egos like theirs? They'd never be able to cooperate._ He pauses, then adds. _It's not supposed to be like this, is it? The cult did something to them, and whatever it was, it made them cruel. But—look at us. We're not like them._

Kassandra isn't sure she can look at things quite as optimistically as Alexios does. She understands what he's saying, of course. He exists, and he is sane, and he is a good person. So there must be a way to save her brother, who is just another version of him—to help him leave behind whatever the cultists did to hurt him, and make him kind again. All Kassandra can think, though, is that maybe that's impossible. Maybe, the cult has twisted her brother so badly that he'll never be anything _but_ a monster.

 _What if,_ she says cautiously. _We can't save them? Alexios, I don't know what your Deimos is like, but mine… he terrified me. I don't know why he let me walk away but if he'd decided to kill me I don't think it would have taken more than a second._ She can picture it. His hand on the back of her head, slamming her into the hard rock of the cave wall, beating her to death the way he'd beaten the man he'd blamed for Elpenor's death. _And I don't think he'd regret it at all._

 _No,_ Alexios says. _Mine's… terrifying too. But we have to try and save them._

Unbidden, a memory flashes into Kassandra's mind. Alexios, only a few days old, swaddled and smelling of milk, tiny mouth open and eyes shut as he sleeps. Innocent. A world away, where her body lies unattended, Kassandra can feel tears on her face again. _Alright_ , she says. _So we try. But together, alright?_ She doesn't know if she could keep pushing forward alone. _I know we're not really siblings, but with Deimos being what he is… you're the closest thing I have to a brother. We need to be int his together._

 _Oh,_ Alexios says, and Kassandra wonders if she's gone too far, said too much. She feels briefly embarrassed, and then Alexios says, _Stentor will be so disappointed he ranks lower than me._

The idea of Stentor, the adopted son of her stepfather, wanting her to think of him as a brother at all is so ridiculous that Kassandra starts to laugh. She's still smiling when she parts from Ikaros and Alexios, returns to her own body, and scrubs the wetness off her face. The smile only fades when she realizes (with an abrupt, all at once suddenness) that she's been thinking about this all wrong.

Alexios, in his own world, is not her brother. Deimos is her brother. Nikolaos is her father, even if they don't share blood, and Myrrine is her mother. Even Stentor is, technically, more of a brother than Alexios. But this family—this family has been made for her, by blood and by other people's choices, a long time ago.

No. Alexios is like Markos, and Phoibe, and Ikaros—even like Barnabas. Family of a different kind, that _she_ has found, and _she_ has chosen. Or to put it another way, they're not just family, but friends.

And if she's lucky, very lucky, maybe through her friends she can save her family too.

The distant screech of an eagle tells her Ikaros has followed her home from Alexios's world. Kassandra holds out her arm for the eagle to land on, and he does so with as much grace as he ever manages. "Come on," she tells him. "We have a lot of work to do."

 **-/-**

 **So unfortunately I'm not sure what my next chapter is going to be-I haven't been making much progress in the main story because I keep accidentally getting into fights with bounty hunters in the middle of cities and then being swarmed by guards for half an hour (0 out of 10, would not recommend as a play style).**

 **I'm thinking about having Alexios and Kassandra switch places for a day and having to deal with that for a chapter-but if that sounds lame write me a review and let me know, and I'll wait for a good point in the main plot to write another chapter in.**

 **Please do not give suggestions for what could be in the next chapter. I think I'm playing this game slower than a lot of you guys are (possibly because I'm literally writing this as I play, during cut scenes and conversations, and that slows things down a bit). Thanks! :)**


	3. Chapter 3

**Spoiler Warning: You should have played through the end of sequence 5 (following up on the three leads on Myrinne you get from the symposium) before reading this chapter.**

 **-/-**

Alexios has noticed that ever since the night when he and Kassandra met Deimos and fled the Cult's meeting, they've had an easier time communicating than they used to. He's constantly aware of her now, the way he used to be aware only of Ikaros. While they still need to meet through Ikaros to actually talk, there are times now when he'll get flashes of how she's feeling. He knows when she's hurt or tired, and he's pretty sure she's getting more or less the same thing from him.

It's actually sort of getting to be a problem. Because their lives are so eerily synchronized, a lot of times when Alexios gets into a fight, he can feel Kassandra pulling out her sword to meet the same enemies, and then their shared competitiveness comes into play, and _then_ the fight tends to turn into more of a race to see who can finish faster. It's probably not the safest thing in the world to rush through battles with bounty hunters or pirates or guards—they do fight a _lot_ of people—just to see which of them is quicker. One of these days, one of them is going to end up stabbed.

So it's probably lucky that neither of them is at much risk of being stabbed today, probably. As much as Alexios is dreading Perikles's symposium, it's probably going to be safer than most of what they do.

Still. Party.

Alexios approaches the house with a reasonable amount of unhappiness, at least until—

"Alexios!"

Absolutely the last voice in the world that Alexios would have expected to hear. "Phoibe!" he says, and laughs as she throws her arms around him. "What are you doing here?"

Her story comes out, in a typically Phoibe-like way. Excited bursts of explanation, mixed in with tangents and side steps. Alexios listens with genuine interest as she explains about the adventure that brought her here. In a way, Alexios is proud of her. It had taken him half a lifetime to get away from Kephallonia, and in the end he'd only managed it through bloody, tragic circumstances. Phoibe, on the other hand, had simply decided she wanted to leave, and then she had left.

Alexios can tell through their connection that Kassandra is meeting with the Phoibe of her world at the same time. She's not feeling the same pride as Alexios—he can feel something between worry and exasperation coming from her. It's so specific that Alexios can imagine exactly what she must be saying to Phoibe. _That was so dangerous, you could have been killed, or caught, and what are you even doing, what if something had gone wrong…_

He almost rolls his eyes but doesn't. Come on, Kassandra. Give her some credit.

Almost reluctantly, a hint of pride _does_ come creeping in then. Alexios can almost hear the way she finishes her lecture to Phoibe.

… _but I'm glad you made it._

-/-

The symposium goes better for Kassandra than she had expected, even if she does have to give in and let Phoibe take her weapons and armor away. The only thing that makes the toga that replaces it at _all_ bearable is Alexios's matching discomfort. Misery does love company, after all.

And at the end, she walks away a lead for where to look for her mater. Several leads, actually, which is where the problem comes in. After the symposium, Kassandra says goodbye to Phoibe (because after all, she had promised) and heads for the closest shadowy rooftop. She's aware of Ikaros hunting nearby, in her world, which means Alexios will have to be the one that comes to see her. And he will be coming, of course he will. After what they've learned tonight, they're going to need to talk.

Alexios waits until Ikaros has finished his hunting before coming to her, because they've both learned—long before they ever even met each other—that there are few things less pleasant than a first person view of an eagle eating dinner. Eventually, when Ikaros has finished, when he comes to Kassandra and lands on her arm, she's fairly sure Alexios is with him.

In no time they're in the air, watching Athens grow smaller below them. _So I had a thought_ , Kassandra says, when they've both had time to get comfortable. _We have three leads for finding mater, and none of them are particularly close together._

He gets it immediately. She'd thought he would. _So we split up and pool information afterwards?_

 _Yes,_ Kassandra says. _Why not? Everything we've gone through so far has been exactly the same, and so if we split up we can both get the information we need._ And, she doesn't need to add, they can find their mater sooner.

Alexios doesn't argue. _Alright,_ he says. _So we split up._

 _I'll go to Keos,_ Kassandra says. _And talk to Xenia._

 _Then I'll talk to Hippokrates, in Argolis,_ Alexios says. _But what about the lead Alkibiades gave us?_

There's a brief hesitation from both of them before Kassandra says, _Maybe the man that couldn't be bothered to put clothes on to talk to us is not the most reliable source of information. We'll still follow up on what he said_ , she adds hurriedly. _We'll just… leave it for last._

 _"Agreed,"_ Alexios says, and they go their separate ways.

-/-

"Alexios," Barnabas says.

It's quiet on the sea today, but Alexios is anxious and restless. This is the first time since he and Kassandra have bonded that they've gone in different directions. Already, there are differences. Kassandra is sailing into pirate waters, and while Alexios floats through calm seas, he can feel the strained intensity of Kassandra as she focuses her attention on whatever ship battle she's stuck in the middle of. He knows it's not a fight on land because behind her iron focus—as sharp as a sword blade—Alexios feels a surge of rolling nausea coming from her. Calm seas are fine for both of them, but Kassandra gets just as sick as he does in rough waters, and—

"Alexios!" Barnabas says again, and this time Herodotos joins him. It's enough to bring Alexios's focus jolting back into his own world.

"Sorry," he says. "What?"

The other two men share an exasperated look.

"My mind was a hundred leagues away," Alexios says. Farther, really. "What were you saying?"

Barnabas leans sideways against the ship's railing. "We were just talking about Ikaros," he says.

Alexios winces. "Has he been aiming at the archers again?" he asks.

"No," Barnabas says. "It's not that. His droppings have all gone into the sea lately, as far as I've noticed."

"Good." As much as Ikaros has grown on him the farther they travel together, the bird has a mean streak a mile long, and more than one of the crew has been gifted with bird droppings on his shoulder for Ikaros's amusement, apparently. "So what about him?"

"Barnabas and I were wondering where he came from," Herododos says.

"Zeus," Barnabas says, without hesitation. Alexios wonders if he's somehow been talking to Phoibe—he'd never been able to talk her out of the Zeus thing either.

Herodotos raises an eyebrow.

"I don't know where Ikaros came from," Alexios says. For the longest time, he would have added that the eagle was _just_ an eagle. Now he knows better, even if he's not sure _what_ Ikaros's story is.

"But he's obviously something special," Barnabas says. "He must be, Alexios. Other birds don't act like yours does."

"I don't know," Herodotos says skeptically. "He's an intelligent animal, I'll give you that. Intelligent for an eagle, anyway, but I don't know if he's _special_ —"

He's interrupted, not by Alexios or by Barnabas, but by a thin trail of white bird poo that seems to drop suddenly from the heavens.

 _"Ikaros,"_ Alexios says, as Barnabas bursts into laughter.

"You see?" he crows. "You see, what happens when you insult him?"

"Oh," Herodotos says grimly, trying to wipe bird droppings from his shoulder without actually touching it. "I see I was wrong. This bird is very… _special_."

In a far off world, Kassandra is wrapping up her battle. The pirates, or whoever she's fighting, are sinking to the bottom of the sea. The tension in the back of Alexios's mind eases off, and the roiling nausea in his gut vanishes. He's able to laugh along with Barnabas as Herodotos pulls faces.

And the ship sails on.

-/-

Kassandra enjoys her time with the pirates.

Well, enjoys is a strong word, but it's simpler, at least, than most of the things that have happened to her lately. She needs to earn money to buy Xenia's information. Easy. She dives for treasure, fights ships, rescues Xenia's marooned brother, and earns the money she needs in no time.

When Xenia is paid, she explains to Kassandra that her mater had sailed with her for a while under the name Phoenix, and has only gone off on her own fairly recently. Kassandra hadn't expected the genuine warmth she hears in Xenia's voice when she tells the story, but it's good to know that at least her mother had found someone she could be comfortable with.

"You could come back here," Xenia offers. "If you don't find what you're looking for out there."

Kassandra shakes her head. "It's been nice to be here for a while, but she's not coming back. There's her mater to worry about, first of all, and then Deimos. Saving him— _trying_ to save him—isn't going to be quick or easy. It might even take a lifetime. Kassandra doesn't think she'll ever make it back here.

"Sorry," Kassandra says. "But I don't think I'll—" and then she stops, as a wave of some horrible stir of emotions goes sweeping through her. It's so intensely unexpected, so apparently random, that Kassandra bites her lip bloody to keep from crying out.

"Kassandra?" Xenia says. "What's the matter?"

"I'm not… feeling well," Kassandra says. Alexios! It has to be him. Whatever's going on with him, it's not good. He's afraid, hurt (physically? Emotionally? She can't tell), scared, and _furious_. "I need to go," she says, so quickly it comes out all as one word. Maybe Xenia answers, maybe she doesn't, but either way Kassandra doesn't hear anything as she flees the pirate city.

She's never felt anything like this before, not on her own, and not from Alexios. Something is obviously wrong, and as Kassandra sprints away from anyone that might see her, her imagination paints vivid images of what she's going to see when she gets to Alexios. He's being hurt, or he's found their mater and she's dead, or Deimos has found him…

Ikaros, at least, is with him in his world, so Kassandra actually has a way to get to him. Small mercies. If he'd been here, in her world, Kassandra knows Ikaros would never be able to fly to Alexios in time. In time for _what_ , she doesn't know, but there's so much urgency in what she's feeling from him that Kassandra knows he needs her, now.

As soon as she's out of sight of the city, Kassandra drops to her knees in the first bush she sees that will keep her out of sight of anyone passing by. She tilts her face skyward, and sends her mind winging its way out to Ikaros. She needs to know. No. Not just know. If something has happened to Alexios, she needs to move heaven and earth— _heavens and earths_ —to find a way to help him. She doesn't even exist in his world, but if someone has found a way to hurt him this badly, she's going to _hurt them back._

She almost seems to have momentum as she crashes into Ikaros, the movement of her mind toward his translates into flight, and together, instantly, they're flying. Kassandra strains her eyes, eagle sharp for the moment, to make out any sign of Alexios on the ground far below. She doesn't need to look hard, truth be told. The flaming building below them is the only possible place Alexios could be.

Ikaros dives. The world blurs, and when the colors and shapes make sense again, they're at ground level. The flames are close, and Alexios is stumbling out, holding a cloth wrapped bundle that screams and cries at the top of its lungs. A baby.

Alexios is hacking and wheezing when he emerges, and he's bent nearly double around the baby. Maybe not the best way to help an infant choking on smoke, but it's clearly meant to be a protective gesture. Kassandra wonders what he's protecting it from.

"Go!" Alexios cries. His voice is low and hoarse from the smoke, and when he points his finger shakes. "Don't let her get away!"

Kassandra has no idea who he's chasing or why, but she trusts him implicitly, and either that carries through to Ikaros or else he understands enough to follow anyway. He wheels around and flies off like a shot, following Alexios's pointing finger.

Kassandra spots the woman almost immediately. She and Ikaros stay with her, tracking her as she takes (steals?) a horse and rides off. They're still following, a silent and unnoticed pursuit, when Kassandra feels Alexios join them.

 _What happened?_ she asks, and even though she's not speaking out loud, the words somehow manage to come out as a whisper. Now that the immediate danger has passed, she can't help feeling nervous. There's something about Alexios's anger that almost reminds her of… honestly, it reminds her of what she'd seen in Deimos.

 _I found out,_ Alexios says. _What happened to our mater when she left Sparta._

 _And?_ Kassandra asks. _What was it?_

 _Ka—my sister Kassandra, not you, she didn't die that day on the cliff,_ Alexios explains. _She was hurt, badly, and mater took her here for help, but—_

He chokes, and Kassandra has to finish the sentence. _But they didn't help?_ she asks.

 _She took her,_ Alexios says, and Kassandra gets the impression that he's exerting a huge amount of self control to keep his tone level and calm. _And she told mater they couldn't save her. And then she tortured her, and trained her, and took every good thing out of her, until she got to be what she is today._

 _She?_ Kassandra says, and as one they both look down on the woman on horseback below them. _'She' took your sister?_ It's easier for her to focus on 'who did this' than 'what did she do' because the sheer horror of someone torturing her baby brother is too awful an idea to think about.

 _Yes,_ Alexios says. _She did._

Kassandra memorizes exactly what the woman looks like.

 _Kassandra,_ Alexios says. _I'm going to kill her._

 _That's fine,_ Kassandra says. What kind of monster tortures children? Babies? _I'm going to track her down in my world, and do the same thing._ A horrible thought strikes her. _That infant I saw you with…_

 _Bait,_ Alexios says. _A trap. Chase her, or save the baby._

Monster.

 _She didn't know about you,_ Alexios says. _Or Ikaros._

Below them, the woman comes to a cave and dismounts, panting hard from the ride. Ikaros perches nearby, and Alexios seems to settle a little. _You can't go after her in your world too,_ he says. _We…_ she can feel him pulling himself together, trying to calm down, trying to think rationally. _We need to find all the information we can about mater. We split up for a reason, right?_

 _And I found what I needed to with Xenia,_ Kassandra says. _She told me that mater has been sailing under the name Phoenix, as a pirate._

 _Wait,_ Alexios says. _What?_

 _So you can go on to Korinth,_ Kassandra says, ignoring him. _And learn what you can from Alkibiades's lead, while I kill the woman that tortured my brother. Those are all the leads we have anyway. And you can't tell me not to do it. You can't tell me this woman gets to live._

 _Alright,_ Alexios says. _I guess it would be a little hypnotical, right?_

 _Exactly,_ Kassandra says.

Alexios fades away then. Kassandra waits there with Ikaros until Alexios manages to catch up to them in person. He follows the woman into the cave, and—

And there are some lines you simply do not cross and if you do, if you commit the kinds of crimes this woman did, against children, against babies, then… well, then you get the kind of ending that Alexios gives to her.

 **-/-**

 **I did not like Chrysis, in case anyone didn't pick up on that. What a horrible person for a baby to get stuck with.**

 **Next chapter will probably be a Kassandra-and-Alexios switch places chapter, because I haven't gotten to another scene that made me go ooh! I have to put that one in! (I just got to Naxos, if anyone wants to make any suggestions without spoiling anything I haven't seen yet :) )**


	4. Chapter 4

**Spoiler warning: This covers through... pretty much through the end of chapter 6. If you've gotten past the part where the game temporarily takes away all your quests and locks you in one city, you're golden.**

 **-/-**

"—is he?"

(Alexios's head is killing him, it's hard to focus)

"—ver seen him before, have you?"

"No."

(He's on a ship. The _Andrestia?_ And he can hear voices over him. Barnabas and Herodotos, so… yes. The _Andrestia_ )

"Well do we wake him up?"

"We have to, I think."

(But something is off, it doesn't feel right at _all_ )

"I'm awake," Alexios groans, pressing his hands to his face. "Just—give me a minute." There's pain bursting in little stars inside his skull. He doesn't remember a fight or a party or anything else that would explain the pain. The last clear memory he has is… he'd been falling asleep last night when his spear started to flare. It does that sometimes, lights up like a torch, when he uses it to do something impossible in a fight. He's just not used to it doing it on its own, this is new, so he'd picked it up just to see.

And then… his mind is blank. He hadn't been on the _Andrestia_ last night, he'd been wrapping things up in Korinthia before heading back to Athens. So… his spear had lit up, he'd (somehow) gotten from Korinthia to the _Andrestia_ , and his head feels the way it does when he follows Ikaros into Kassandra's world, only a thousand times worse.

The obvious conclusion is right there in front of him, but Alexios doesn't want to reach it.

He opens his eyes (mistake, the sun is right above him, blinding him), and squints at Barnabas and Herodotos in front of him. The twin expressions of uncertain distrust, as if he was a stranger, makes the conclusion impossible to avoid. He's in Kassandra's world, on _her_ _Andrestia_ , where _her_ Barnabas and _her_ Herodotos are looking down at him like they don't even know him. It's because they don't. It's because they know _her_.

Alexios sits up slowly, mind racing as he tries to figure out what to say. He doesn't want to be chased off the ship in the middle of the sea, but he doesn't know how to start. "I can explain," he says, and then regrets it immediately. The only way that sentence can possibly end is with the words _but you won't believe me_.

"Then explain!" Barnabas says. Alexios doesn't think he's ever heard him angry before, but he's angry now. "Who are you, what are you doing here, and where is Kassandra?"

He stands, unsteady as he finds his feet in this new world for the first time, holding his hands out in front of him so they can clearly see that he's unarmed. "Let me just start by saying—"

A burst of borrowed pain informs Alexios that Kassandra has just woken up, and has just as bad of a headache as he does. So if she's in his world, that means she'll be… last night, Phoibe had insisted he stay with her, so she'll be there now.

"Let me start by saying Kassandra is safe," he says.

"Where is she?" Barnabas asks.

"…nowhere we can get to," Alexios says carefully.

"Then how can you possibly know that she _is_ safe?" Barnabas demands. "And how can we trust you to know?"

Alexios opens and closes his mouth several times, looking between Barnabas's angry expression and Herodotos's oddly impassive one. He's just realizing that there's nothing he can give them as proof he's trustworthy, when he hears a familiar screech overhead. They all look up, watching as if mesmerized, as Ikaros spirals downward and finally lands on Alexios's hastily raised arm. The eagle arches his head toward Alexios, clearly expecting praise, and Alexios responds more out of habit than anything, stroking the bird's head obligingly. But even as Ikaros makes a show for Herodotos and Barnabas of being friendly with Alexios, there's a certain look in his eye that says _what are you doing here, you stupid human? This is Kassandra's place._

He sighs. If he _could_ have fixed it, he _would_ have.

When the other two stop looking, Ikaros nips at his fingers. Alexios makes a face at him.

"Alright," Herodotos says. Alexios looks up from scowling at Ikaros, surprised to hear Herodotos speak. So far he hasn't said anything, content to let Barnabas do the talking. Now he's looking right at Alexios over the top of Ikaros's head with an intensely serious expression. Alexios gets the distinct impression that he's not so much ready to trust him, as he is ready to trust him _for now_.

"Really?" Barnabas says. "You just need the bird to like him?"

"Aren't you the one that's always saying you think Ikaros comes from the gods?" Herodotos says calmly.

"Well yes, but _you_ don't believe that." Barnabas looks conflicted, Herodotos looks unreadable, and Alexios does his best to look nonthreatening. Finally, Barnabas throws up his hands. "Fine!" he says. "Fine. But you're not—" And there's a sudden, protective flare in his voice that surprises Alexios. He doesn't think Kassandra would like knowing people think she needs protecting. "You're not leaving our sight until we get Kassandra back from wherever she's gone."

"Trust me," Alexios says. "There's nothing I want more."

-/-

Kassandra wakes up with a splitting headache and no idea where she is. She _should_ have been on the _Andrestia,_ but… no, something had happened hadn't it? She remembers being half awake and seeing her spear glow. She'd reached for it to see what was going on, and then felt an odd kind of sideways movement, then nothing. And now…

"Wh—who are you? What are you doing here?"

Kassandra starts to sit up, then freezes when she sees a dagger shaking in front of her. When she squints up the length of it, she's horrified to see Phoibe's tear stained face looking back at her. "Phoibe—"

"Where's Alexios?"

It's like a bucket of cold water to the face. "Oh no," Kassandra whispers.

"I _saw_ you," Phoibe says. "He was… he was _right there_." She points with the dagger, too close to Kassandra's face for comfort. "And then he was gone, and you were there."

The first several times Kassandra tries to grasp what's happening here, her mind rebels, shying away from the conclusion trying to form.

"Where is Alexios?" Phoibe demands again. She looks like she's going to cry.

Kassandra takes a deep breath, and forces herself to come to terms with the feet that she is, somehow, in Alexios's world. And she's going to have to deal with the fact that Phoibe is on the verge of panicking. That's the first priority. Very gently, she moves Phoibe's dagger away from her. "I don't know… exactly where Alexios is," she says. "But—"

"You're lying," Phoibe says. She doesn't protest when Kassandra moves the dagger, but doesn't back down either. "You're _lying_ , he was just there and then you… you replaced him."

Kassandra maks a snap decision. It's hard, not knowing this version of Phoibe and not being trusted by her, but… it's still Phoibe. And Kassandra knows Alexios has already hinted to Phoibe that there's something different about Ikaros, so she thinks, maybe, that Phoibe might be willing to believe her. "Listen," she says, holding up a hand to stop Phoibe from working herself up any further. "Let me explain."

Phoibe doesn't look like she'd been expecting to actually get an answer. "Oh," she says. "You… really?"

"Really," Kassandra assures her. "But it might seem a little bit crazy, and I need you to bear with me while I get through the whole explanation. Alright?"

Cautiously, Phoibe says, "A little bit of crazy is… my favorite kind of story." She settles in, and Kassandra does too, smiling a little sadly.

"I know," she says. She remembers. Then she launches right into it, starting with the part Alexios has already explained. "Phoibe," she says. "How much has Alexios told you about Ikaros?"

Phoibe's eyes gleam with excitement.

-/-

Alexios has to wait three whole days before he has a chance to talk to Kassandra. She's been to see him, twice, impatiently waiting with Ikaros for him to join them. And he would have. Happily. But he hasn't been able to get away from Herodotos and Barnabas long enough to talk, so all he knows for sure is that Kassandra is still alive and still healthy, and significantly calmer than he is.

But finally the ship has to dock to take on supplies, and Alexios is able to creep away to somewhere he can do what he needs to without being observed. When he gets to Ikaros, Kassandra joins him almost immediately.

 _There you are_ , she says. _What took you so long? You've been stressed._

 _Your friends won't take their eyes off me,_ Alexios says. _And I probably don't have much time now, actually._

 _You could have just explained._

 _Really?_ Alexios asks. _They would have believed me? Herodotos would have believed me?_ As it is, he can't shake the feeling that the older man is suspicious of him. Not for the obvious, general reason that he'd appeared out of nowhere the same night Kassandra disappeared, but for some specific reason he can't guess at.

A pause, then Kassandra admits, _No. Maybe you shouldn't have told them. I did tell Phoibe though, because she was… upset._

 _Upset,_ Alexios asks. _Or scared?_

 _Scared._

Well, he can't argue with her choice then. _Did she believe you?_

 _Yes. Eventually. She had a thousand questions. And I did tell her not to trust anyone that… you know. Looks like me, but younger and… angry._

Deimos. He's glad Kassandra thought of it.

 _But,_ Kassandra goes on. _If we don't have much time, let's focus on how this happened and what we're going to do about it._

 _The spear,_ Alexios says at once. _Did you see the same thing I did?_

 _It glowed,_ Kassandra says. _And then I woke up, and I was in your world. I can' guess what caused it though._

 _Neither can I,_ Alexios says. _Maybe nothing did. Maybe it just happened._

 _If that's true, then there's no way to fix it,_ Kassandra says. _I can't… no. I can't accept that._

 _I have an idea,_ Alexios says. _It's a complete guess, but it might help? This is the first time we've really been separated. I went to Argolis, and you went to Keos, and then you went to Argolis, and I went to Korinth—but we're…_ he struggles for the words. _We're two halves of the same whole. We should be taking the same path. Maybe if we meet up, stop going to different places, maybe we'll be able to get back to our own lives._

 _It… kind of makes sense,_ Kassandra admits. _So where do we meet up? Here, Korinthia?_

 _No,_ Alexios says quickly. _There was a cultist in Korinth, the Monger—he had the whole area under his control. The one in my world is dead, but if I go to your Korinthia, there won't be any way to avoid him. He'll see me, and assume I'm Deimos, and report back to the cult, and… I don't know how that ends, but there are lots of options and they're all bad._

 _I can't easily travel very far right now,_ Kassandra says. _You have my Andrestia, but I don't think I can just walk onto your ship as a total stranger and convince them to go anywhere for me._

Close by, Alexios is aware of the sounds of sailors heading back to the ship. He's running out of time. _What about this?_ he says. _Phoibe will be going back to Athens, to get back to Aspasia. They'll have given her a way to get back, so you can go back with her, and I'll work on convincing Barnabas to take the Andrestia there too._

 _Perfect,_ Kassandra says. _Now go before you get caught sneaking out._ Alexios pulls away, shaking off the momentary disorientation of his own body, and goes sprinting back to the ship. By the time the rest of the crew is back on board, Alexios is sitting calmly off to one side, as if he'd never moved.

-/-

Phoibe, it turns out, is very excited about getting to help Kassandra get back to Athens. It clearly makes her feel important, and it gives her a chance to satisfy her curiosity. She showers Kassandra with question after question, and when Kassandra runs out of answers, Phoibe starts making up her own. She spins wild stories of how and why this all works—Kassandra can't help noticing that Alexios is almost always the hero of these tall tales, although once in a while Phoibe will politely give Kassandra the starring role.

And so the journey goes. It's nice, really. Nicer than Alexios's trip, anyway. He can't talk to her (and she… misses him, even more than she expects), but at least Phoibe is happy to watch over her while she uses Ikaros to go visit Alexios. He seems unhappy, but at least he's safe, and then they get to Athens.

Which is… _not_ safe. Kassandra walks through the city, trying to understand how it could have fallen into this state so quickly. The plague has destroyed _everything_. Now that she's here, she can't _not_ help. She can't stop herself from doing everything she can, even if it is less than she could have done more in her own world, where everybody knows her.

In a morbid way, it sort of helps that things are falling apart. People are more likely to trust her to help them, and of course a misthios is a misthios, no matter what world she's in. People hire her, and she does what she can.

And their plan is working. Now that she and Alexios are back in the same city, she can feel their lives starting to merge back into one. They're talking to the same people again, taking the same jobs, getting into the same fights. They're not _completely_ synched yet, but they're getting there. They're close.

Phoibe is with her as much as she possibly can be, hanging off her every word, occasionally getting underfoot, but not distracting her too much. Kassandra probably indulges her too much, if she's being honest with herself, but she likes having someone around that knows the truth. And Phoibe is an ever present reminder that she's not supposed to be here—that she has to find a way home, back to the people she knows and the place where she belongs. She needs to get Alexios back here.

Athens gets worse. Everyone is sick, it seems like. Perikles is sick, which is something Kassandra is only vaguely aware of, because of course he doesn't know her in this world. But Phoibe hears about it, and tells her, and that's when Kassandra tells her to go home.

"Go back to Aspasia," she says. "Don't stop for anything."

"What?" Phoibe's expression turns stubborn. "I'm not going anywhere until Alexios—"

"I don't _know_ when Alexios will be back, Phoibe," Kassandra says. "But I will make sure he comes and finds you as soon as he can, okay?"

"But—"

"Phoibe!"

"Fine, fine…" So she goes. She goes _reluctantly_ , but she does go. Kassandra watches her until she's out of sight, then gets back to work. If Perikles is sick, if he dies, then Athens is going to riot. Kassandra wants Phoibe safe and off the streets before then.

And that's really all she can do for her.

-/-

Alexios is dealing with the same thing as Kassandra, apart from the worries of keeping Phoibe safe. As far as he knows, this version of her is still in Korinthia, waiting for Kassandra to show up. It's probably safer for her there, even with the Monger. At least that's a threat they can see coming. It's not as invisible as the sickness burning its way through Athens.

He's doing what Kassandra is doing, helping out as much as he can, trying to synch his life back up with hers in the hope that it'll let them switch again. The difference is that he's still based out of the _Andrestia,_ because Barnabas had apparently been serious about not letting him out of his sight until Kassandra's back.

So he comes back, he checks in, he borrows Kassandra's equipment when he needs to. The armor doesn't _quite_ fit right, but her weapons are weighted just like his, and he needs _something_ to help him get through the chaos on the streets. It's while he's stopping back on the ship when Herodotos calls him over.

"I think there's something we need to talk about," he says. "If you have a minute."

If he's being honest, Alexios is exhausted. If he has to run back out into the city one more time without a break, to burn sick bodies or stop a riot from forming, he thinks he might just keel over from sheer exhaustion. "Alright," he says, already sitting down. "What did you want to talk about?"

"You," Herodotos says. "And who you are."

-/-

Kassandra isn't quite sure how she gets dragged into the hunt for Perikles, but she doesn't really mind. He's sick, dying even, and Kassandra respects him enough to not want him to die out on the streets. He—well, the Perikles of her world—had been friendly and helpful whenever she spoke to him, and she doesn't want him dead. Not like this.

There are rumors racing through the streets now, that Kleon is ready to take over as Athens's leader as soon as Perikles is dead, and his supporters are getting louder and more violent. There's a crawling, unsettled feeling running its way up Kassandra's spine now. The city feels more like a warzone than the actual battlefields she's been on do. The streets… they must be the same streets she's walked before, in her world, but they feel somehow tighter here, more claustrophobic.

Kassandra is passing the Partheon when she spots familiar faces. Sokrates, Hippokrates, Aspasia… none of them will recognize _her_ , but Kassandra drifts closer anyway, choosing an out of the way entrance so she can get inside, and see what they're here for without them seeing her.

But when she gets a good look at the inside of the building, Kassandra wishes she'd never come _near_ the place.

-/-

"You want to talk about me?" Alexios asks. "Now?"

"I wanted to make sure we had a chance to talk," Herodotos says. "Just in case something happens." He gestures to the raging city.

Alexios tries not to look nervous. He's been using a fake name, something common that won't attract attention. He hasn't talked about his past at all, he's given Barnabas and Herodotos as little information about himself as possible. "So…"

"I can't help noticing," Herodotos says. "That you look _very_ similar to Kassandra."

Alexios shrugs. They do share the same parents.

"And Kassandra does have a brother," Herodotos says, watching him carefully. "I was there the day she met him, I remember the way she looked. I've never seen her as afraid of anything or anyone, as she was of her brother that night."

He gives Alexios a pointed look, and it clicks.

Herodotos thinks he's Deimos.

-/-

Kassandra is frozen, staring across the wide open room, at the woman crouched over Perikles, holding her sword to his neck. She would have known that face anywhere—it's younger, but it's _hers_. Her mind freezes (because it had been hard enough facing Alexios-as-Deimos, hard enough knowing her brother has been taken and twisted, _how is she supposed to face herself like this_ ).

Deimos looks up at her, and for an instant the expression on her face makes Kassandra want to throw up. Pure, mindless fury distorts her features, and Kassandra doesn't want to _see_ that. Then Deimos sees her, recognizes her, or at least her face. Her expression turns to one of disbelief.

Kassandra remembers to move. "Don't," she says, jerking forward a step or two. "Stop—"

It doesn't make a difference. Deimos doesn't even seem to _listen_ , she just slits Perikles's throat as if it doesn't _matter_ , and in an instant she's on her feet and heading with sure, purposeful steps toward her. Her sword comes up, and Kassandra raises hers too—they meet, with a clash of steel that echoes and bounces in the cavernous space. Kassandra looks up and over the swords, and stares at Deimos glaring back at her.

-/-

Alexios's mouth has gone dry. "I'm not Deimos," he tells Herodotos. The man stares at him, clearly not believing him.

-/-

Kassandra is strong, but she's suddenly finding out that she's not strong _enough_. Their locked swords are being forced back toward her.

"You are me," Deimos tells her.

-/-

"I'm not," Alexios repeats.

-/-

"I'm _not_ ," Kassandra says, a world away.

-/-

And unseen, unnoticed by anyone, two broken spears begin to glow as Kassandra and Alexios slip back into synch with each other.

 **-/-**

 **This was such a weird chapter to write! xD Keeping track of who's in which world and what's different between them and then (hopefully!) making the ending tense instead of confusing. I had to cut it off there because (a) it was getting long and (b) there are just too many different ways this could go. Are they just going to switch back no problem? Is Kassandra-Deimos going to get caught up in it somehow (she's _right there_ , it could totally happen)? Is something _else_ going to go wrong? I have no idea! But I should probably be asleep already, it's 12:30 in the morning, I have work in the morning, and it is way too late to figure this stuff out.**

 **And, last thing-if you've gotten to this point in the game, you may have noticed that I did not kill off Phoibe. It... didn't feel right to do that while they were switched, if I'm going to do it at all. I like Phoibe, and since Alexios and Kassandra started to confide in her way back in chapter 1 before I knew what was going to happen to her, I don't like getting rid of the one outside person that knows everything.**

 **I'm going to stop this rambling now. Goodnight!**


	5. Chapter 5

**No new spoilers after the last chapter, this just deals with the immediate aftermath of what happened last time :)**

 **There is some brief, minor self harm at the end, if that bothers anyone.**

 **-/-**

It doesn't happen the same way this time. They both stay conscious, for one thing. For another, they don't… switch. Or they do, but not quickly, and not at the same time. Alexios feels a sharp tug somewhere in the vicinity of his navel, and then he's flying sideways, through space that isn't quite space, but isn't quite anything else Alexios can put a name to, either. It tears his breath away, makes his head pound and his eyes water, and then—

-/-

Kassandra feels something heavy crash into her from _nowhere_ , and she and Deimos go flying sideways together, swords clattering away beside them. They skid along the floor for several feet until they collide with something hard and unyielding, where they come to a sprawling stop in a heap of arms and legs and weapons.

Deimos curses, bringing Kassandra back to her senses. She tries to push away from the body on top of her, assuming it must be Deimos, but freezes when she recognizes Alexios instead. For a second she doesn't dare move, too completely lost to even know whether this is her brother, or this world's Alexios. One option is complicated but good, while the other means she's probably about to die.

Alexios shakes his head blearily and looks down at where Kassandra and Deimos are pinned underneath him. His eyes go wide, and Kassandra is relieved to feel his confusion wash over her. That's good. This is the Alexios she has a connection with. It's possible they're both going to walk out of here alive.

"I think I'm missing something here," Alexios says, and jerks his head toward Deimos in a _what's going on here_ way.

"Weren't you just with the other one?" Kassandra asks. They're in the same world. _They're in the same world_. This, somehow, is at least as weird as coming face to face with a corrupted version of herself in Deimos.

He shakes his head. "No, I was on the _Andresteia_ —"

Which is when Deimos kicks him hard enough to send the wind out of him with a little audible _oomph_. He rolls backward, off the other two, and Deimos scrambles to her feet. Kassandra races up after her, standing in front of Alexios while he fights to get his breath back. She'd kicked him in exactly the right place to drive all the wind out of him (without, Kassandra notices, doing permanent damage. Intentional?).

"You're _not_ possible," Deimos tells her. She sounds… angry, yes, but also uncertain. There's something in her voice that reminds Kassandra of her brother in that cave with the cult, right before he'd spared her life for no reason she could understand. She still doesn't know why he did that.

"Just go," she says to Deimos now. Part of her wants to grab her by the shoulders and shake some sense into her, but Kassandra doesn't dare. There's a twitchiness to Deimos that makes her look like she's always just about to lash out. "You've done what you came here for," she says. "Now _go_."

But Deimos doesn't budge. "This doesn't make _sense_ ," she says. She's whining, Kassandra notices but doesn't dare acknowledge. "You are—you—"

"Go," Kassandra says. Behind her. Alexios is still gasping, but on his feet. She can… _feel_ him. A presence, or an extension of herself, even before he moves forward so she can see him. They stand side by side, a united front and a _wall_ , facing Deimos down. Silently, Ikaros flies in, and lands on her shoulder. " _Go,_ " Kassandra says again, quietly but with force.

And this time, maybe recognizing she's outnumbered, Deimos goes. There's rage stamped onto every inch of her face, and her exit is far from graceful—but she goes.

Alexios lets out an audible sigh and sags. "She's not going to forget that," he says.

"And now I guess I have to go piss mine off if we want to stay in synch," Kassandra says. "Great."

"If he's anything like her, he's always angry," Alexios says. "It shouldn't be hard."

"Mmm," Kassandra says. Hard to be excited about that. She turns to look as he puts his hand on her shoulder.

"Hey," he says. "Can we just…" He gestures between them. "It's nice to meet you, Kassandra. In person."

Because of course they never _have_ met in person. They've never both been in the same place—in the same world—at the same time. "Hello," Kassandra says, feeling oddly formal. She shouldn't—he's still Alexios. She knows him. She reaches out, as he takes his hand off her shoulder and moves forward to grasp his forearm in greeting.

Which is when she notices the weapons he's carrying, and snorts out a kind of half laugh. "That's mine," she says., pointing to the sword at his side. "Mine—" The bow on his back. "And mine." The arrows, too.

"Well I didn't exactly have any of _my_ things with me," Alexios says. "And you keep yours on the _Andrestia_ , the same as I do."

"So you just took them?" She crosses her arms and shakes her head at him. "I didn't have my weapons either." She's been fighting with just her spear and a sword she'd taken from a dead man.

"Well I'll give it all back," Alexios says. "Here, do you want it?"

"Yes."

"Now?"

" _Alexios_."

They're still bickering (it's easy to fall into with him, like how—like how she would imagine it would be to have a brother) when Kassandra hears footsteps and looks up, expecting the worst. Deimos, or more cult members, or looters. Instead, she sees—

"Phoibe," she says, with some exasperation. "I told you to go back to Asposia, didn't I? You need to get off the streets."

Phoibe isn't listening. She only has eyes for Alexios as she dashes over and hugs him. "You came back."

"I did," Alexios says, slightly strained. It sounds like he's just had the breath knocked out of him, again. "Did you get along with Kassandra?"

Kassandra would have been surprised if Phoibe was thinking about her at all in that moment. To her credit though, Phoibe manages _some_ tact. "She reminds me of you," she says. "She wasn't _too_ bad."

"Thank you, Phoibe," Kassandra says, then looks up at Alexios. "Now give me my things back."

He laughs and she grins, and that's where they are when their switch catches up to her at least, and pulls her home.

And Alexios still has her things, too.

-/-

"Alexios?" Phoibe asks, when they're alone. She reaches out and prods him, not too hard, like she's scared he'll vanish if she hits him hard. "You're not going to leave again, are you?"

He wishes he could give her that promise. In reality, he has no idea. "Phoibe…" Then he stops, clueless. How is he supposed to explain something he doesn't even understand himself? "I can't stop that from happening again, but if I _do_ go—"

"Don't!"

"But if," he says slowly, with purpose, "I _do_ , then Kassandra will be here."

"Which one?" Phoibe demands. "I _saw,_ Alexios. There were two of them, and one…" She gives him an expressive look.

Alexios sighs. He does not want Phoibe involved in this, but she's in so deep already that he doesn't think he can back out. "Listen," he says. "I know Kassandra explained about Deimos."

Phoibe nods.

"Well," Alexios says. "They're different in _every_ possible way—"

"They look the same," Phoibe interrupts.

"Alright," Alexios says. "Every way except how they look. But on the inside? Where it counts?" He catches her eye. "Trust me, Phoibe, you will know right away which one you're dealing with."

She looks skeptical, but nods. Alexios is pretty sure he's going to have to continue this conversation with her later. But for now… "Time to get out of the city," he says aloud. "Come on, Phoibe." He puts his hand on the small of her back and gently steers her outside. "I don't think Athens is going to be safe for much longer."

"It's not safe already," Phoibe points out, which is true, and makes Alexios move faster. He keeps an eye out for Deimos as he moves, but there's no sign of her anywhere. Still, he doesn't relax. The farther they go, the more time he has to think, and the more terrible conclusions he comes to.

Deimos might have seen Phoibe, that's the first and somehow _least_ bad thing. It's still bad enough, though, if she ever gets it into her head to hurt Phoibe to get to him.

Deimos has also seen Kassandra. She's angry, and in some ways very immature, but Alexios doesn't think Deimos is an idiot. She'll be thinking about Kassandra now, trying to figure it out, and Alexios has no idea what conclusions she'll come or how to prepare for it.

Deimos is going to do… _something_. There's no way she'll see what she just saw, and not act out in some way. Alexios just has no idea what it is that she's going to do, just that it will be bad, and it won't be what the Deimos of Kassandra's world will be doing.

So that means they're going to separate again. Their lives won't be on the same track, and there may be more switching in the future.

This isn't over.

-/-

Kassandra hits the deck of the _Andrestia,_ rolls several feet, and almost goes over the side before she manages to get her bearings. The only thing that stops her from tumbling into the water is someone's hands grabbing hers and pulling her back up.

"You—"

"Herodotos," Kassandra says, finally managing to look up and recognize who's holding her. She's getting so sick of falling all over the ground. There's going to be bruises in the morning.

"What was that?" Herodotos asks, helping her up. There's genuine concern in his face, but surprise is still visible behind it. Kassandra doesn't think she's _ever_ seen him surprised before.

"Well," Kassandra says, and then stops.

"Kassandra?" He lets go of her hands, but stays close.

She doesn't say anything. Her mind races.

"Kassandra!" he says again, louder this time. "You've been gone for days, a stranger shows up in your place, and I just saw him vanish into _nothing_ , before you finally came back. What happened?"

"It's complicated," Kassandra says. She doesn't want to explain this again—not only has she already spent far too long answering Phoibe's questions, but she'll also be making yet another difference between two worlds that are supposed to be the same.

"Please, Kassandra," Herodotos says. "Trust me. We were worried."

"I do trust you," Kassandra says. "But… I need you to wait." Just until Alexios got back to his ship and his Herodotos, so they can both explain. They _need_ to stay in synch. "The timing's… not right."

"The _timing_?" He looks so disappointed in her that Kassandra feels genuinely guilty. "When will the timing be better, then?"

"Soon," Kassandra says. Hopefully. No—definitely. She'll talk to Alexios. They'll do this _soon_. "Please," she says, and it's all she says.

Herodotos sighs, and steps back. A little bit of the tension eases out of the air between them. "Let me know," he says. "When you think the timing is going to be right."

"Herodotos, I'm not trying to… I will tell you."

"I just have one question for now," he says. "That man. The one that was here."

 _That man_ , Kassandra thinks. She wonders if Alexios had even told them his name.

"Was he your brother?" Herodotos asks.

Kassandra winces. "Not… exactly," she says. To her relief, Herodotos doesn't press. Instead, after a moment's pause, he gives her a faint smile. Kassandra relaxes.

"I asked you to trust me," he says. "But now it looks like I will have to trust you instead."

-/-

In another world, Deimos sits on her horse in the darkening light of a rain soaked afternoon, staring into the middle distance, fists clenched so tightly around the reigns that her knuckles are turning white. She can't get that face, her face, _her own face on a stranger_ , out of her mind's eye. Things like that don't happen, not as far as she's ever heard of.

There's two of her, and the other one—Deimos scowls— _disapproves_ of her. Who does she think she is? Doesn't she know who _Deimos_ is? She curses under her breath, viciously enough to make the horse's ears twitch. Anger fills her, but it's a rusty kind of anger, tarnished from the disturbing sense that she's doing… something wrong.

She's not. She's in the right, completely in the right. The rest of them are the ones that are wrong.

Deimos turns the horse around sharply, riding back toward Athens. She's going to rind _him_ , Alexios, and she's going to beat the answers out of him. As soon as she figures out what the questions are. As soon as she figures out why it feels like the floor has dropped out from under her, and everything is upside down.

This isn't how the world is supposed to be. She doesn't like feeling like this.

Deimos rides until the horse, tired and not used to carrying her (she'd stolen the animal on her way out of the city) refuses to move any further. Frustrated, but not willing to argue with a horse, Deimos stops for the night. It's getting dark, and cold, and if the horse won't move then she's not getting back to Athens tonight.

She sets up camp instead, a little way off the road. It's still raining, a flat drizzle that won't let up, so Deimos huddles in the feeble shelter of a tree and broods. As she sits, and thinks, and tries to figure out what to do, she absentmindedly takes out a knife and runs it slowly over the palm of one hand. At first the moment is gentle, but gradually she presses harder, and harder, the force matching the increasing frenzy of her thoughts, until finally she freezes. Her hand is clenched around the blade, blood dripping slowly down the edge as the steel bites into her palm.

The action, as always, grounds her. Blood is familiar, and pain means control. She has been taught from a young age to seek pain, to know it, and through knowing it… to trust it. After all, pain has never let her down the way people do, and if Alexios—and that unknown double wearing her face—won't give her the answers she wants, Deimos can show them that pain too.

They will talk. Or else they will bleed.

Deimos smiles as she cleans the knife and wraps her hand. Just like that, the world makes sense again.

 **-/-**

 **Guys, Deimos's point of view is _weird_ to write. Especially since the Deimos in my playthrough is male. Hopefully it works? **

**Next chapter I think is going to be is meeting one or both of their (biological) parents because I just got to the mission where their dad shows up and _oh man there are so many ways I could write that scene into this fic :o_**


	6. Chapter 6

**Spoiler warning: You should have met both of Alexios/Kassandra's (biological) parents before reading this.**

 **-/-**

A month sails past.

It's a peaceful month, more or less, even if it's also extremely busy. There are differences between their lives that need to be fixed, and that takes some time. Kassandra has to tell her Phoibe what's been going on (although that takes some convincing, without Alexios there as proof) and she also has to take the Monger out of Korinthia. Alexios goes to Keos, to learn from Xenia what Kassandra has already told him, and they do both (finally) tell Herodotos, and through him Barnabas as well.

Barnabas, of course, believes them instantly and almost before they can finish explaining.

They're back in synch, which is a relief after everything that's gone wrong, but at the same time…

Alexios keeps hearing rumors about Deimos. Not in so many words of course, no one specifically names her, but there are whispers here and there of a woman stalking her way through Greece, lashing out at people in a _significantly_ less subtle way than what Kassandra's Deimos is doing. So that's a difference that has to be because of them. The one difference they can't do anything to fix.

But at least everything else is the way it's supposed to be, again. Until Deimos tracks him down, Alexios and Kassandra are in synch. They even have a location for their mater, and things are moving forward again. They have a lead… no, they know exactly where she is.

Which is a completely different kind of problem, because the closer they get to Naxos, the more Alexios paces, the more ways he sees this can go wrong, the more nervous he gets.

"Not looking forward to it?" Barnabas asks.

"I am," Alexios assures him as he continues to pace.

"You don't look like you are."

"I'm just… worried," Alexios admits. He hasn't seen his mother since he was a child, but she's changed, and he's changed, and he doesn't know how they're going to pick up where they left off.

"It'll be fine," Barnabas says.

"How's she doing?" Herodotos asks.

Alexios doesn't have to ask who _she_ is, because his life is quickly becoming ridiculous, and there's no one Herodotos _could_ be asking about except his female alter ego from another world.

"Kassandra's doing about as well as I am," Alexios says, which is almost but not _quite_ a lie. She's nervous, he can feel that, and the rebounding echo effect of their twin anxiety is almost definitely not helping. But she _hides_ it better. She won't be packing the way he is.

Herodotos nods and doesn't ask any further questions. Alexios always thinks the historian seems to be slowly gathering evidence of Kassandra's existence, considering each new answer Alexios gives him before asking the next question. He hides a smile and turns away, but the sight of Naxos in the distance wipes the smile away immediately.

"Cheer up, Alexios!" Barnabas calls. "You'll see, everything will turn out _fine_."

Alexios forces a smile, just to get Barnabas to stop shouting at him about his feelings. He doesn't expect anyone to understand why he's so nervous about seeing his mater again. But the last time he had seen her…

Unbidden, his hand strays to the hilt of his sword. Kassandra's sword, really. There hadn't been time to return it. She always says something when she sees him wearing it, but Alexios is pretty sure she'd have done the same thing if their positions were reversed.

Pretty sure. She's a little less sentimental than he is.

But she's sentimental _enough_ , he can tell, to be nervous about meeting their mater again. And that means… well, when the ship has finally docked, Alexios turns off the beaten path and finds an out of the way place to hunker down. He can feel Ikaros in the distant sort of way that means he's with Kassandra.

In a second, he'd joined them.

-/-

 _How do we do this_? Kassandra asks. Below them, through Ikaros's eyes, the island of Naxos spreads out below them.

 _It's harder than it was with Nikolaos,_ Alexios says. _He needed to prove himself to us, but mater never did anything wrong._

 _She fought for us,_ Kassandra agrees. _Nikolaos, he couldn't… he didn't have the_ right _to…_ She doesn't have the words.

 _Mater might be disappointed in us,_ Alexios says softly, finishing the sentence she can't figure out.

 _Exactly_ , she says. If the Wolf had been disappointed by the man-and-woman they've grown up to be, he… well, they would have laughed in his face. He'd tried to kill them. He'd thrown them off a _cliff_. He didn't have a right to be disappointed. Their mater… she did. Their mater, the pirate, who had run all the way to Argolis to try to save her baby, she might be disappointed to find out that her oldest child has been perfectly happy to live in the backwater of Kephallonia as a mercenary.

 _She's in charge here_ , Alexios says glumly. _Did you hear the people in the docks talking about Phoenix?_

 _Yes,_ Kassandra says.

 _She runs all of Naxos,_ Alexios goes on, as if she hadn't answered.

 _I know, Alexios,_ she says.

 _What are we going to say?_

And this, at least, Kassandra has no answer for.

When they've gone their separate ways, back to their own worlds, Kassandra resolves not to wait another second. She's going. Now. Just… just as soon as her traitorous legs start obeying her.

She feels a surge of sudden determination from Alexios then, unexpected but crisp and clear as the first gust of wind on a cold morning. Kassandra moves forward, in time with his determination. When she feels his spirit start to flag, she does her best to boost him back up. Leaning against each other like two injured warriors staggering back from battle, they come to Phoenix's home.

There are people there, a crowd that Kassandra doesn't quite dare to focus on. Her attention is focused like a knife on the voice of her mater, and she can't help herself (tucked out of sight, still half terrified) from smiling.

As the room empties out, Kassandra pulls her spear from its usual place on her back, and holds it in her two upturned palms. As she slowly closes her fingers around the shaft, she can almost feel Alexios's hands next to hers.

Together, as perfectly in synch as they have ever been, they step forward. Kassandra can hear her own breath in her ears, and her footsteps with their slight echo as she walks across the bare floor. Then her mater turns around, and sees her face (like she's looking at a stranger), then down at the spear (surprise at something that shouldn't be here), and finally back up to her face (confusion that flickers briefly onto suspicion and then to recognition). "Kassandra?" she asks.

And at no point, not once, does Kassandra see disappointment on her face.

-/-

The peace lasts only a little while. And _peace_ isn't—it's not an absence of fights, or battles. It's just a sense that between Kassandra and his mater, Alexios finally has enough family around him to feel like he's in the right place in his life. He is, for a little while at least, content.

Then comes the inevitable change.

Alexios hasn't spent much time thinking about his father, his birth father. There are too many other things to worry about, and Alexios isn't going to waste his time worrying about a man he's never even met, and never expects to meet.

Not until his mater tells him where the man is. At that point, it… changes. Now that he knows where the man is, he _has_ to go see him, he can't just let it lie. What he's going to say to the man when they meet, well… that depends on a lot of things. Alexios has half a dozen ideas of what he might say (and from Kassandra, he gets half a dozen more), but none of them sound _right_.

The location his mater has given him turns out to be an old ruin, with no sign of humans having been there for years. Decades. Since Alexios wants to scout the area, and Kassandra wants to scout the area, they do what they've done before, and rely on the fact that their worlds are pretty much the same. Since Ikaros can only be in one world at a time, they both look through Ikaros's eyes at one world, and assume that everything will be the same for both. So far the strategy has never let them down.

 _Coincidentally_ , and certainly not intentionally, this gives Alexios and Kassandra a chance to talk before they go in. Not that they haven't talked about this already. They've talked the subject to death on the way here, and Alexios isn't sure what's left to be said.

Ikaros is with Kassandra; he goes to them, and together they survey Kassandra's version of the ruins. Finally, Kassandra says, _At least Ikaros is excited_.

It's true, he is. Alexios has noticed it too, although he doesn't know exactly why Ikaros should be happy to be here. Or even if _happy_ is quite the right word. He navigates the ruins with obvious familiarity, more than Alexios has ever seen from him outside of Kephallonia. No—even _in_ Kephallonia, where he and Kassandra had lived with Ikaros for years, the eagle had never seemed quite this comfortable.

 _He must have been here before_ , Alexios says.

 _But when?_ Kassandra asks.

 _Before he came to us,_ Alexios says. _I guess?_

There's a moment of silence as they both think about how far it is from here to Sparta, and wonder if there's any way Ikaros could have made it all that way to them by chance.

Distinctly unsettled now, Alexios says goodbye and good luck, and they go their separate ways.

Neither of them knows, as they head into the ruins, that if Ikaros had happened to be in Alexios's world instead of Kassandra's, if they'd used his eagle eyes to look down at _his_ version of the ruins, they would have seen that the ruins in his world isn't as completely empty as they are in Kassandra's.

-/-

Kassandra's feeling that something is wrong only gets worse the farther down she goes. The ruins remind her of the place where her spear was made, that half-real, half-impossible place, where voices speak without mouths and power is an almost _physical_ thing.

The hairs on the back of Kassandra's neck stand up. There's no good reason she can think of for her father to be here, and when she finally reaches the… end (or the beginning—it almost looks like a fate, or a doorway), Kassandra has a certain, sinking feeling that this is not going to go as well as her reunion with her mater. It is probably not even going to go as well as her reunion with Nikolaos.

There's a man standing at the far end of the hall, so still he might as well be a statue, leaning against a staff that's taller than he is. It's not until Kassandra is much closer that the man moves at all. She swears she can hear a kind of creaking, groaning sound, something stiff and unyielding moving for the first time in… how long?

"Kassandra," he says, and she feels oddly naked at realizing he knows her name. Then his eyes… shift, to somewhere just to one side of Kassandra. "And Alexios," he says, which makes Kassandra's heart almost stop. He can't mean—not _Deimos_. Not here. "Surprise after surprise."

Kassandra's head whips around so quickly that her braid hits the side of her face—but it's not Deimos she sees there, but Alexios. Not as solid as when they'd fought his sister together in Athens, but solid _enough_. Kassandra blinks, and he's still there, glowing with a vaguely golden orange light.

"And a third surprise visitor," the man murmurs, as Kassandra and Alexios continue to stare at each other.

"Are you in my world?" Alexios whispers. "Or am I in yours?"

Kassandra has gotten good at sensing the difference, but right now she can't tell. "It feels like both?" she says. "Or… neither."

He nods, and then as one they look up—Alexios, slightly taller, ahs to duck as Ikaros streaks past, only just barely above them. The old man nods to himself again as Ikaros lands on his shoulder.

"You know Ikaros?" Alexios asks.

"We are… very old friends," the man answers.

"Wait," Kassandra says. "You—how can you see both of us?"

He doesn't smile. His face doesn't exactly look capable of it. But the corners of his mouth do turn upward in a vaguely rictus-like explosion. "Strange," he says. "Isn't it?"

"Yes," Alexios says. "So how—"

"Are these really the kinds of questions you want answered?"

" _Yes!_ " they cry, in unison. Then they look at each other again. Kassandra breaks first, and looks back at the old man.

"We came here… we're looking for our father. Fathers."

"Father?" Alexios guesses. Pronouns are becoming strange.

"You've found him," the old man says. Then he shakes his head, clearly disappointed by their blank, matching stares.

"But we're not from… the same world," Kassandra says. "So you can't be _both_ of our—"

"Two worlds," their father says. "Two children in each, a boy and a girl, one born years before the other." He points to Kassandra. "In one world, the girl was born before first, and in the other—" His slightly crooked pointer finger swings sideways to Alexios. "The boy came first."

"We figured all this out already," Kassandra says, but he holds a hand up to stop her from saying any more.

"The two of you are the only difference between your two worlds," he says. "You and your siblings. And this is a… special place. Here, the two worlds can converge. Each of you sees the other as a kind of shadow, because you don't exist in the other's world. But as long as you are within this place, there is no other separation between your two worlds. Do you understand?"

Again, Kassandra and Alexios look at each other, then back at their… father. The best Kassandra can understand, he's saying that in here, he is a sort of… combination of her father and Alexios's. There is no difference between the two, so here, in this strange place, the two combine into one. If they were to leave, to where the two worlds are fully separate, there would be two versions of him again.

"Yes?" Kassandra says.

"I… maybe," Alexios manages.

Their father gives a dismissive snort. "Well," he says. "If that's too much of a puzzle for the two of you, try these. My name is Pythagoras, and this is Atlantis."

"Wait," Alexios says.

"What?" says Kassandra.

-/-

Unseen by her brother and… _Kassandra_ (a name she has always hated, ever since learning it was hers in an earlier life), Deimos hides in the shadows, and watches. She doesn't move until the confusing explanation about Atlantis and artifacts has finished, and the other two have gone.

And then, the old man comes right up to her and stops, arms folded over his chest. "Well?" he says. "What are you hiding for?"

Deimos's jaw drops, and her face burns the color of fire. "You saw me?" she asks, stepping out of the shadows.

"I'm amazed _they_ didn't," the old man answers. "You're more brute force than stealth, aren't you?"

She can tell by his tone that he's judging her. Deimos hates to be judged. She bristles, but he waves her annoyance off.

"Never mind that," he says. "I did say there were three surprise visitors today, and I've only gotten to talk to two of them so far. So, if you can stand to keep yourself from killing me for a minute or two… it's time for us to talk."

"What about?" Deimos asks suspiciously.

"To start with," he says. "I would like to know why you came here. I don't understand why you cared enough to come."

She scowls. He could have started with an _easier_ question.

 **-/-**

 **Guys I'm so proud of me superior typing skills, this took me like four days to hand write and then 53 minutes to type. Which probably means typos, I'm sorry, I think I got them all but they like to be sneaky.**

 **Also just to warn everyone, the next chapter is going to be... a fairly long wait, mostly because I've done a grand total of ONE main story mission past this point, and I have no idea where I'm going next! Especially with Deimos and Pythagoras because COME ON, BRAIN, HOW WERE YOU PLANNING TO WRITE YOUR WAY OUT OF** _THAT_ **CORNER? WHAT ARE THEY EVEN GOING TO TALK ABOUT?**


	7. Interlude: Layla

**Spoilers up through the modern section that pops up after meeting Kassandra/Alexios's father. So really nothing you wouldn't already know about if you read the last chapter.**

 **-/-**

Layla is in the animus too long.

That's nothing new of course, because Layla is almost always in the animus too long. It's a problem of hers, a bad habit she can't kick (and isn't sure she wants to), and her first thought as she stumbles out of the animus today is that Victoria is going to lecture her over it. Again.

It was easier in Egypt. Just Layla, alone in the still, quiet underground, the weight of history and someone else's memories thick in the air around her. After Dee… died, and before William showed up, Layla had developed some fairly unhealthy animus habits. During the worst of it, she'd only come out to eat and shit, drifting out of the animus and through what she needed to do before going right back again. She'd never been sure, in those days, who she was or what year she'd find waiting for her outside.

Victoria doesn't let her do that here. It's irritating that she's always pulling Layla out, to eat, to exercise, to talk, to get _another_ psych exam. Irritating, but—well, Layla has stopped waking up in the middle of the night, panicking because she can't remember where she is.

Layla rubs her hands over her face, waiting for the lecture to start, but—

"Layla, come on!"

That's different from normal. Louder and more urgent, and something is wrong. Layla doesn't think it's how long she was in the animus today.

"Layla! They—are— _coming_!"

She realizes belatedly what Victoria is shouting about, as her brain finally starts firing on all cylinders and everything clicks. Templars are coming. Sure, right—they'd known it was going to happen, they'd known they were moving through the area, and now they must be almost here.

She can deal with this. They have everything in place already, the things they need to bring with them (except for the animus—Layla needs to pack that up herself), the traps and tricks they're leaving behind for the Templars to find. It's a simple, straightforward plan that _anyone_ could follow, bleeding or not.

(Bleeding or not, Layla thinks with a sudden flash of guilt, as she remembers—she really needs to ask Victoria, and _soon_. Bleeding, or not?)

Layla pushes herself to her feet and scrambles to get the animus packed up. Five minutes later, they've abandoned the hideout, driving away as the Templars descend on the cramped London flat. Next stop, Greece. Atlantis.

It's a long, uneventful trip. They've shaken the Templars off their trail so effectively that the whole journey, somehow, becomes boring. This isn't something that usually happens with the Assassins, and Layla is pretty sure she's not the only one freaked out about it. Maybe that's why she goes to corner Victoria when they're about halfway there. This noneventful trip is freaking her out—subconsciously, maybe she's looking for drama.

"Victoria," she says. "I—can I ask you something?"

She's not nervous until she actually opens her mouth, but all of a sudden a surge of adrenaline flashes up through her whole nervous system, making her shift uncomfortably.

"Me?" Victoria asks, and Layla can't blame her for sounding skeptical. Most of the time, Layla is quicker to dismiss her advice than to listen to it, but she _is_ an expert on the bleeding effect.

Layla crosses her arms and leans back until she can feel the small movement of the _Altair II_ under her shoulder blades (but all she can think of is the _Andrestia—_ she shakes it off). "The bleeding effect," she says, bracing herself for an _I told you so_. "I need to ask you about the bleeding effect."

"Do you think you've been experiencing symptoms?" Victoria asks, suddenly all worried concern. It's almost annoying, how non gloaty she is.

"I'm not sure," Layla says. "I mean, I've bled before, but this feels different."

"How so?"

"It's… confusing," Layla says. " With Bayek and Aya—Amunet—everything felt so real. More real than me, sometimes. But I know that was the bleeding effect, and I know how to deal with it, and I've moved past it. Now, the animus here, it's more like…" She sighs. "Do you remember, when I first found the spear and we were trying to pull a genetic sample off it, we couldn't tell whose DNA I should be following?"

"Sure," Victoria says. "But we decided it wouldn't matter if you picked Alexios or Kassandra."

"Yea," Layla says, suddenly reluctant to continue.

Victoria pushes. "And?" she says.

Layla takes a deep breath, then all in a rush says, "I'mnotsurewhichoneitis."

"Sorry?" Victoria says. "I didn't quite catch that.

Layla's not a mumbler. She's not happy with herself for not being able to get the words out. She tries again, forcing herself to enunciate clearly. "I'm not sure which one it is," she repeats. "Sometimes I think I'm Kassandra, and sometimes I think I'm Alexios, and sometimes I think I'm _both_ , and it always makes sense in the moment but then I get out of the animus and I can't even _remember_ whose memories I've been looking at. It's like a dream, and—" She suddenly remembers something else. "Victoria, I think they've been talking to each other."

"Talking to..?" Layla." Victoria reaches over and puts a hand on Layla's arm. Then she withdraws it quickly when Layla pulls a face. "You have to remember. This is history. This is something that has already happened, a very long time ago. The animus might not be able to figure out which sibling really wielded that spear, but it was only one of them. You're not living two peoples' lives at once. You need to remember that."

"I can't even remember which one I'm—Victoria, I don't even know if this is the bleeding effect or… not. It feels like something else."

"What else could it be?" Victoria asks.

"It feels like…" But Layla doesn't have the words. "I don't _know_ ," she says, voice rising as her frustration mounts. "I just know that it's different."

Victoria's concern is almost a physical force by this point. Layla can feel it pushing at her, and she wants to pull away from the conversation, just leave and pretend it never happened. "You know you don't have to keep doing this, right?" Victoria asks. "We can find other ways to hurt the Templars."

But this isn't just about hurting Templars to Layla anymore. There's a mystery in the animus that she needs to solve. "I can't stop now," she says. "It's too important."

"To the Assassins?" Victoria asks. "Or just to you?"

She doesn't have an answer for that, so Layla just ignores the question. "It just feels like there's something there," she says. "Something big."

"Alright then," Victoria says with a small sigh. "I guess—you've been through all this before in Egypt. I suppose you might know what you're talking about."

"Geeze," Layla says. "Thanks for the overwhelming confidence."

Victoria frowns at her. "I don't like any of what you just told me," she says. "I just want to make that clear. If the animus is confusing you that much, you probably shouldn't be going back in."

"I'll be fine," Layla says. "I just… _need_ to keep going." What she needs is to figure out what's _real_. Bleeding, or not. Alexios, or Kassandra. Layla needs to _know_.

-/-

Atlantis feels… right, to Layla. In a deep stone cave far underground—no, underwater—she feels secure for the first time since Egypt. This is how it had been then, too. Just Layla, alone in the cave with her animus and the past and the corpses of Bayek and Amunet. She'd liked the calm there, and she likes it here, too.

Layla explores the place in silence, giving herself a few minutes just to marvel at the ancient space. She'd been here, only hours ago, two and a half centuries in the past. She can trace the steps of—of either Alexios _or_ Kassandra, she can't remember—and find the spot where Pythagoras had stood, leaning on his staff. It's eerie.

It's beautiful.

Still in silence, Layla sets up the animus. She'd been worried about being able/ to get enough power to run the animus all the way down here, but that turns out to not be a problem. Before she even has a chance to hook anything into the machine, the animus is already powering up. She pokes nervously at it for a few minutes, then remembers that this _is_ a place that has been drenched in first civilization technology for a very long time. She can imagine it seeping into the stone, the water, the very air around her.

She wonders, briefly, if that's going to have any weird effects on the animus, then decides it doesn't really matter. She's going back in either way, and she'll find out soon enough. Layla shakes her head, then lies down on the animus and goes through the familiar, grounding process of plugging herself in.

And then—for just a second, as the world transitions from Layla and the animus in 2018 to the world of… of either Kassandra _or_ Alexios, Layla could have sworn she hears a voice behind her.

"It has been so long," says the voice. "Since I had a visitor…"

But there's no one else here, so Layla tells herself that she must have imagined it.

 **-/-**

 **Short chapter, sorry, but I wanted to just post a kind of hey I'm alive! update. I've played about another 15 hours since the last chapter, but it's all been running around after cultists or doing random side missions, and since I'm trying to limit this story to _main_ missions, that doesn't really help with giving me writing inspiration...**

 **I'm going to try and start focusing on the main plot for a while so I can get another chapter up soon, but it really just depends on when I get to something in the plot that makes me go ooh, I could write that! Fingers crossed, hopefully soon...**


	8. Chapter 7

**Sigh. So this is the hardest spoiler warning so far because everything I can think of to say is a spoiler itself! So either this is after the first mission in chapter 8 (Uprising), OR it's after the cutscene where Barnabas and Sokrates come running in with a shovel and a broom.**

 **-/-**

 _So_ , Alexios says to Kassandra the next time they speak. _Sparta_.

 _Sparta_ , Kassandra agrees. _We're… home again._

Between their joined minds, Ikaros glides over the city. It makes Alexios think, suddenly, of Theras where their father lives. _Do you remember when we met Pythagoras?_ he asks.

 _I'll be amazed if I_ ever _forget,_ Kassandra says drily. _He's very memorable._

This is hard to argue with, so Alexios doesn't even try. Instead, he says, _I mean, do you remember how at home Ikaros was when we went there? He knew it so well. He was so comfortable there._

 _I remember,_ Kassandra says. _But why bring it up?_

 _I don't feel like that in Sparta,_ Alexios says.

After some hesitation, Kassandra agrees. _No,_ she says. _Neither do I._

 _I don't feel like that anywhere,_ Alexios says.

This time, Kassandra doesn't answer. She doesn't have to, of course—Alexios already knows that she agrees, he can just… feel it. Even if she won't admit it, she agrees with him.

 _It's just,_ he says. _I—_

 _I don't feel like that anywhere,_ Kassandra interrupts. _There's no place where I really feel like I'm at home. But… I feel like that with Ikaros. And with you._ Her voice is very calm, very sure and steady and certain.

Alexios wonders how long she's been turning this over in her mind before bringing it up, but before he has a chance to ask, she continues.

 _Wherever we go,_ she says. _We're all still with each other. No matter what I'm going through or how far I travel, I know you're always seeing and doing the exact same thing. I can talk to you, but I don't have to say anything for you to understand me. That's more like home than anything else I've ever known._

They happen to be passing, just at that moment, over the house where they had been born. Both of them look down at it. Both go quiet. None of the things that need to be said, none of the big and important things, actually _need_ to be said. Not between the two of them. Kassandra is right.

 _Are you going to tell mater?_ Kassandra asks after a while. Alexios senses it's more to break up the silence than anything else, like she's trying to move as quickly as possible past the things she's just opened herself up to say. _Are you going to say anything about us?_

 _I can't decide,_ Alexios says, letting her change the subject. _Only if you do, I guess. Whatever else we do, we need to stay in synch._ The last thing he wants is to switch again, now. _So… what are you going to do?_

But Kassandra clearly doesn't know either. She hmms, then says. _We told Phoibe._

 _Yes,_ Alexios agrees.

 _And Herodotos, and Barnabas. Why not tell mater too?_

It takes Alexios a minute, but he comes up with the answer for what he feels instinctively. _Because if you tell her about me,_ he says. _If you even say my name, all she'll think of is Deimos. She wants her family back together, but she wants your brother, not me. And the same goes for my mater and the Deimos here._

Which is her right. She wants to save her youngest child, she's made that very clear. Alexios is still not entirely sure whether either version of Deimos can be saved, but… well, for his mater, he can try. And he doesn't want to confuse things anymore.

 _So we don't tell her,_ Kassandra says.

 _We don't,_ Alexios agrees. He's not exactly sure whether it's the right decision, but it _feels_ right, and as long as it's the same decision for both of them—well, Alexios doesn't feel all that bad about making it.

-/-

Sparta is a busy time for Kassandra. Entering the Olympics is busy too, although it is also, definitely, worth it—winning sends a surprising burst of pride through Kassandra unlike anything she's ever felt before. True, her time in the Olympics does make Barnabas and Herodotos feel like they have permission to talk sport the whole way to Boeotia, but… well, maybe that's not _so_ bad.

And then there's Boeotia, and Kassandra knows as soon as she lays eyes on Stentor that this is going to be the real challenge. He's aggressive and arrogant from the word go, and none of his bluster helps him hide how poorly he's dealing with his grief for Nikolaos. It shakes Kassandra a little to see him, almost a total stranger, mourning her father like this.

Stepfather, she reminds herself with a start. Technically, she has no more claim to Nikolaos than Stentor does.

As Stentor spits insults at her, Kassandra sees the shadow of wings over his head. Ikaros, wheeling round over him, ready to swoop down and peck Stentor to death (or to annoyance, at least) for harassing her. Kassandra hurries Stentor through to the end of the conversation, and doesn't complain when he gives her what he apparently thinks is an impossible task.

(But—taking out four so-called Athenian champions? Easy)

When he's done, she hurries quickly away, calling for Ikaros to come land on her arm as she goes. "What are you doing?" she scolds him. "Why are you making trouble for me?"

He screeches in affronted protest.

Kassandra shakes her head at him. "Behave, you oversized chicken."

A few soldiers nearby laugh at her scolding, and the mood in the immediate area lightens. When Kassandra turns to mount Phobos, she catches a glimpse of Stentor behind her. Now that the confrontation is over, he looks… drained. The tension goes out of him, and Kassandra feels a stab of pity. Stentor isn't even the most troublesome brother she has. He hasn't done anything wrong other than annoy her, and he hadn't asked to be pulled into this drama. He just wants his father back.

Considerably more gloomy (and slightly more guilty) now, Kassandra mounts up and rides away. She manages to chase Stentor out of her thoughts and keep him away for quite a while after that, until she runs into Nikolaos himself. It's a bittersweet reunion, but Kassandra can't stop herself from making it that little bit more awkward than it has to be when she tells him how much it would mean to Stentor to see his face again.

Stentor probably won't thank her for it, but Kassandra does feel better when she confirms a little while later that Alexios had done the same thing, and sent Nikolaos back to Stentor. Even if their family might never be whole, at least these two can be back together again.

-/-

The battle for control of Boeotia is worse than other battles Alexios has been part of. There's an unfettered violence in the air around him, and a churning unease in his gut that screams of bigger danger than normal soldiers and swords.

He doesn't understand why until he finally realizes there's a sort of tide in this battle. A general movement away from a growing line of dead and dying men, falling more quickly than anywhere else on the battlefield. Alexios traces the carnage until he gets to the end, and the perhaps inevitable source of the violence.

"Deimos!" he roars, and charges at his sister. His anger at her excessive violence is followed by other thoughts. _She looks just like Kassandra_ , he thinks, and then, _I promised mater I would bring her home._

He's ten feet from Deimos when she looks up at him, and the expression on her face makes Alexios pull up sharply. Her eyes are red, like she's been crying, and her whole face is pale. For several long, frozen moments, the two of them just stare at each other. Alexios can feel Kassandra through their link, and the push and pull of her emotions driving her through a fight. She's angry and sad and hopeless all at the same time, so Alexios knows she is actually _fighting_ her brother.

But in front of him, Deimos's sword is wavering. The tip starts to lower.

"Alexios," she says, so quietly that Alexios isn't sure whether or not he'd imagined it. If it's true and not just his imagination, then this is _her_ , reaching out to _him._

(And in another world, Kassandra's brother hits her over and over again. Their blades crash together and arrows fly as the fight rages on)

Alexios doesn't have a chance to react before a tree comes crashing down on both of them. He tries to dodge out of the way, but there's just not enough room. He grunts as he goes down, all the wind going out of him, and the last thing he sees is Deimos pinned under the tree next to him.

He's not exactly sure what happens after that. He's vaguely aware of being pulled from the tree and hurried away, and of Kassandra's pain making his own seem pale in comparison. She'd fought with her brother. Alexios hadn't. Dimly, he wonders why. He doesn't think they've done anything different lately, they've been careful to stay _completely_ in synch. So why…?

(Deimos. Deimos, who had seen Kassandra, who has been in places Kassandra's brother hasn't been. Deimos, who had looked like she'd been crying)

He's taken to a ship, not the _Adrestia,_ which is when he first realizes—too late, stupid, _stupid_ —that he's not being helped, he's being taken captive.

Confined and restrained on the ship, he recovers fairly quickly. There's no chance to try an escape though, not even when he's dragged off the ship, through the dark, nighttime streets of Athens, and into a prison cell.

It's damp and grim in the cell, and Alexios has no idea if anyone even knows where he is. They'd have had to see him taken off Boeotia's battlefield, followed him to the ship, then used another ship to follow _that_ ship to Athens (and no one in their right mind would try to use a ship for stealth, would they?).

No one's coming.

No sooner has Alexios come to this realization than he hears footsteps heading toward him. He looks up, and sees Deimos.

-/-

It had taken Kassandra most of the trip to Athens just to get her strength back. Fighting Deimos had been… rough. She'll carry those scars forever, from his blade and his fist. Having a tree land on her right after that had only made everything worse.

She's barely strong enough to walk when they bring her to the prison in Athens. Briefly, Kassandra lets herself wallow in self pity. Because she's been surrounded by cultists all the way here, she hasn't had a chance to see Alexios at all—but she can feel that he's not as badly hurt as she is, which isn't helping her current mood.

"You should have left me to die."

Kassandra jolts away from the wall she's been leaning on for support. "Deimos," she says, and curses the way her voice sounds breathless. She hadn't heard her come in, and she's startled—why is he _here_?

"I wouldn't have tried to help you if you were hurt," he says.

"I had to," Kassandra tells him. "I promised mater."

His face twists. "So _now_ it's about family?" he asked. "Why wasn't family important that night on the cliff when you threw me over?"

"I didn't!" Kassandra says, because there's no way she's going to stand here and let him accuse her of that. She'd been thrown off herself, trying to save her.

"I know exactly what you did!" He's not shouting, he's roaring, and even though Kassandra isn't all that close to him, she feels spittle hit her cheeks. "They _told_ me—"

"Who did?" Kassandra asks. "The Cult?"

"And I saw it," he says. "That night in Delphi, I saw what you did."

"You didn't see what you _thought_ you saw."

"No?" His face is twisted, contorted, and if Kassandra hadn't been growing so angry herself she would have been grateful for the bars between them. As it is, she just pushes on, limping a step or two toward him.

"No! Did you see me try to save you? Or Nikolaos throw me over that cliff after you?"

"Lies, liar—"

"Did you see mater go after you? Did you see her carry you hundreds of miles to try and save you?"

"Liar!"

"Alexios!"

"DON'T—" And she knows instantly that she's made a mistake. "CALL! ME! THAT!"

But she's angry now too. "No," she says. She doesn't shout like he does, but drops her voice into something cool and quiet. She sounds like her mother at her most disappointed. "I know who _Alexios_ is. I know the potential _Alexios_ has. You don't deserve to use that name."

He shoots her a withering look. "At least we agree on something. Goodbye, _sister_."

-/-

"I've been… talking to people," Deimos tells Alexios. "A person. One person."

"From the cult?"

She shakes her head no.

"Who, then?" Alexios asks. He feels like he's on shaky ground here, having what could almost pass for a normal conversation with Deimos. He's scared to say too much, in case he pushes her away, especially when he doesn't even know why she's willing to talk in the first place. Something has happened to her, something big.

"It…" Deimos puts her hand on her blade, then takes it off and crosses her arms. "It doesn't matter who."

Alexios thinks it does, but he doesn't push. There's a building chaos in the back of his head, coming from Kassandra. He's realizing that whoever his sister has been talking to, the other Deimos hasn't met them. He feels Kassandra's cold anger, mixed with grief mixed with fear mixed with confusion. And he sees the way his sister is looking at him, almost sideways, like she can't make herself look him full in the face.

Alexios realizes with a start, like a rush of cold water running down his spine, that he's going to have to choose. He can pick a fight with Deimos and send both their siblings storming away in a rage so he can stay synched with Kassandra. Or he can stay calm, reach out to his sister, and try not to break this fragile peace between them.

He wavers, thinking of the chaos that will definitely follow if he and Kassandra can't stay in synch on something this important… and then of the memory turned nightmare of his sister falling off that cliff.

…Kassandra will understand.

"Deimos," he says quietly. "Who were you talking to?"

(In another world, another Deimos is storming away, and Kassandra is biting back a scream that turns into tears—first angry, then of grief)

In this world, Deimos shifts, putting all her weight on one leg, then the other. Then she says. "Our pater."

"Nikolaos?"

Shakes her head no.

His mouth drops open, which seems to amuse her. For the first time, he sees Deimos grin. " _Pythagoras_?"

She doesn't answer. She doesn't have a chance before Kleon (of all people!) comes thundering into the prison to lecture her and put her in her place. Deimos is sulky and obstinate and almost childlike as Kleon lectures Alexios, but…

Not once during his lecture and her tantrum does Deimos take her eyes off Alexios.

 **-/-**

 **Alexios and Deimos kind of ran away with me a little bit here, I was not expecting them to try and make friends. And I mean, it's _fine_ , but it does kind of make Kassandra seem a little jerky in comparison, which makes me sad. Oh well. Hopefully she'll have her chance to shine in future chapters. Especially now that Alexios has completely ruined their chances of staying in synch... **

**As usual, I haven't played past this mission (I've been running around fighting Medusa, which ARRRRRGH not a fun boss fight, and getting rid of cultists). Please no spoilers!**


	9. Chapter 8

**No spoilers for this one, just dealing with the fallout from Alexios and Kassandra not being synched anymore.**

 **-/-**

Alexios wakes on the deck of the _Andrestia_ , as usual. Over the past month, it's just gotten… safer, to sleep here, with people that know him. The sun is bright enough overhead to hurt his eyes when he cracks them open, and he judges it's at least an hour after sunrise. Nearby, Phoibe leans against the ship's railing, chewing on something and eyeing him skeptically.

"Am I supposed to be here?" he asks. It's sort of become his new _good morning_ , more part of the routine than something he actually needs an answer to. He's expecting the answer will be no, because his Phoibe doesn't give him looks like that. Only Kassandra's does.

Sure enough, Phoibe shakes her head no, and throws a piece of whatever she's eating at him—luckily, it turns out to be bread. It doesn't hurt too much when it bounces off his forehead. Alexios sits up and tosses the bread back at Phoibe—she ducks and it sails past her, going into the sea with a distant _sploosh_.

"Still mad at me?" he asks.

"Kassandra says you made things harder," she tells him.

Alexios stands up and puts his hand on her shoulder, patting it good naturedly. "Well," he says. "She's not wrong, is she?"

Every day for the close to three weeks since he choice to offer Deimos an olive branch instead of fighting with her and staying in synch with Kassandra, he's barely been able to stay two days at a time in either world. Yesterday he'd been in his world, hunting cultists, and now he's back in Kassandra's world, having bread thrown at him.

Phoibe doesn't protest his hand on her shoulder. A couple weeks ago she would have, but she's gradually been warming up to him. "Because of your sister," she says, half a question and half an accusation.

"I had to," Alexios tells her.

Phoibe sighs and gives in. "Yea," she says. "Kassandra says that too."

"Oh," he says, relieved. "Good."

Phoibe doesn't answer. Instead she turns, looking down to where Barnabas is standing with a few of the archers. From the snatches of conversation Alexios can hear over the creaking of the sails, it sounds like he's telling them a story about a chimera. "Barnabas!" she shouts. "Alexios is here!"

"Bah!" he shouts back. "Nothing but trouble!" But it's good natured—Phoibe isn't the only one that's gotten used to Alexios and Kassandra switching back and forth. In a surprisingly short amount of time, the whole ship has. "Tell him he's trouble, Phoibe!"

"I will!" She turns back to Alexios and gives him an innocent smile. "He says you're trouble."

He makes a show of sighing and looking as put out as possible, which makes her laugh.

"So what are we doing today?" Phoibe asks, and Alexios shrugs. The problem is that he can't be seen by almost anyone in this world. Cultists are hiding everywhere, and if any of them see him and mistake him for Deimos, an already complicated situation will get even worse. Normally, when Alexios is in Kassandra's world, he ends up just staying on the _Adrestia_ , just so he doesn't run into any problems he can't fix. Kassandra is doing the same thing in his world, and it's really starting to slow them down.

"Kassandra was talking about going to see Pythagoras," says a voice behind him. Alexios turns to see Herodotos standing behind him, and nods at the man. He hadn't heard him walk over. "That seems like something you could do if you wanted, without risking anyone seeing you that shouldn't."

They are actually fairly close to Thera. Alexios does some quick mental mathematics, and realizes they could be there by midafternoon. There's also the chance that Kassandra might be heading there too—if they're there at the same time, at least they'll be able to talk face to face. If not, he'll still be able to see Pythagoras. He badly wants to know what the man has been saying to have changed her so much. The difference between the two versions of Deimos is like night and day, and Alexios just can't figure it out.

He hasn't seen his sister since that day in the prison. She'd run off, and with all the time Alexios has been spending in Kassandra's world, he hasn't been able to track her down.

"Let's go there, then," he says, then steps back as Barnabas heads up to take control of the _Andrestia_. He's not captain here, Barnabas has made that very clear—there's a difference between being liked, or even trusted, and being in charge the way he is in his own world. Alexios isn't here to replace Kassandra, and taking her place on the ship _would_ be replacing her. Instead, he sits with Phoibe out of the way of everyone else.

They talk about Phoibe, mostly, because she never gets tired of hearing about the other version of herself. It's something both Phoibes have in common, actually—Alexios thinks that if they ever actually meet, they might just explode from excitement.

Eventually, Alexios manages to steer the conversation onto what Phoibe has been learning since she started living on the _Andrestia_. She's getting a hodge podge education from Kassandra, from Alexios, from Barnabas, and from Herodotos (who struggles with holding her attention with history and writing when she'd much rather be learning to 'do what Kassandra does,' and fight). It sort of makes Alexios sad to see her growing into violence so quickly. But this is the world they live in, and this is the best chance Phoibe has to survive her childhood in this increasingly violent Greece.

Today, he shows her how to make arrows. It's easy to do in the confined space, and it holds her attention until they finally get close to Thera. The closer they get to the island, the less the arrows seem to hold her interest.

"Can I meet him?" Phoibe asks at last when her attention has well and truly wandered. They can't be more than a few minutes from landfall now, and the island looms large before them. Soon, Alexios is going to have to get ready to go. He starts packing up his supplies.

"Who?"

"Pythagoras," she says.

"You want to meet him?" Alexios asks. "Why?"

"He's Kassandra's pater."

Alexios gives her a sideways look, trying to figure this out. "He's not very much like Kassandra," he points out eventually.

"But he is her pater," Phoibe insists, ignoring the fact that he's Alexios's pater too. "I don't—"

And then she stops. She looks down at her hands, then up, then across to Thera. Then she says, "My pater is dead. I just want to see… _a_ family again."

Oh. So that's what this is about. "Phoibe…"

" _What_?" she says, instantly defensive.

"I'm sorry about your pater," Alexios says. "And your mater." He knows she's gone, too. "But Phoibe, you have a family here."

"No I don't," she mumbles, crossing her arms.

"Yes you do," he says calmly. "Kassandra, for one—"

"Really?" Phoibe's whole demeanor changes instantly, she almost bursts with excitement as her eyes go wide. "Kassandra, she really—does she think we're a family?"

"Of course," Alexios says. He can't help a small laugh at her obvious surprise, even though… well. Does _his_ Phoibe know she's family? He's always just assumed, he's tried to make time for her, and he's always thought… well, he'll have to tell her when he gets back. So he'll know that she knows for sure. In the meantime, he hurries on. "There's Barnabas too," he says. "And Herodotos. I know they care about you."

She looks over his shoulder and Alexios follows his gaze. Herodotos is standing behind them again, looking very solemn. "Alexios is right, of course," he says. "Whatever strange places this ship may be going, it will always be a safe place for you to be with people that care for you."

"We all need to stick together, Phoibe!" Barnabas calls from his place at the ship's helm. "We're in this together!" He half turns, and catches Alexios's eye. "And Alexios is with us too. Whether he's supposed to be or not."

"Thank you," Alexios says.

"You're still trouble," Barnabas informs him. Alexios only shrugs. He's getting used to being trouble.

"Maybe," he says, turning back to Phoibe. "Kassandra can go see Pythagoras when she gets back. We'll dock the ship here and wait for her."

"Then… what are we going to do instead?" Phoibe asks.

Alexios looks down at the arrows they've just spent the morning making. "Well," he says. "I could teach you how to shoot."

"Really?" she says. "I'm not too small?"

He smiles at her. "We'll figure it out."

-/-

Kassandra is mildly annoyed to find herself in Alexios's world—again—when she wakes up, but she's used to it by now. She can complain as much as she wants, but the truth is that if her brother had come to her the way Alexios's sister had come to him, she would have done _exactly_ the same thing.

Still. It's getting really difficult to get anything done while she's spending half her time in Alexios's world, so Kassandra has come to Thera to see if Pythagoras has any idea how to stop it. He seems to know more about it than anyone else, so it's the only place she can think of to go.

"Can I come with you?" Phoibe asks, as Kassandra is gathering her weapons (or Alexios's weapons, or at this point, honestly _their_ weapons. Apart from their broken spears, which both of them have taken to sleeping with, it's impossible to tell which things belong to which of them after this much switching).

"You do not want to meet Pythagoras," Kassandra assures her.

"Is he awful?" Phoibe asks.

"He is…" Kassandra pauses to try and figure out how to answer. "He is very strange, Phoibe."

"Are you happy you met him though?" Phoibe asks. It's another question Kassandra doesn't know how to answer.

"I'm happy I have answers that I didn't have before," she says. She gives Phoibe as bright a smile as she can manage and pats her shoulder. "I'll be back by sunset," she says, then heads to shore before Phoibe can ask any more questions.

She's less careful than usual as she heads across the empty island, which is why she doesn't realize that it _isn't_ empty until Ikaros screeches suddenly above her, snapping her attention back to the real world.

"Oh," Kassandra says, pulling up sharply.

Her voice is loud enough to startle the person in front of her, and Kassandra tenses as _Deimos_ turns around to look at her. It's like looking in a broken mirror, seeing Alexios's sister here in front of her. She has to force herself not to reach for a weapon, in case that undoes whatever progress Alexios has made with her. It's hard, though. She knows that if this was the other Deimos, they'd be fighting already.

"I'm not going to fight you," she says out loud, mostly because she's hoping that hearing it will make it easier to stay away from her sword, but also to reassure Deimos.

"Good," Deimos says. It sounds almost rote, not really angry. "You'd lose."

Kassandra bites her tongue to stop herself from arguing. She and Deimos stare at each other like two startled animals, not sure how to react to seeing one another. Finally, Kassandra says, "Are you here to see Pythagoras?"

Deimos eyes her.

"I'm here for the same reason," Kassandra assures her quickly.

Finally, Deimos relaxes a tiny bit. "Pythagoras explained where you came from," she says. "But I didn't really understand."

"I don't really understand it myself," Kassandra admits.

"Pythagoras says you're more like… Alexios than you are like me."

Kassandra notices her reluctance to say her brother's name, but doesn't comment on it. Instead, she says, "He's right. I have a younger brother in my world that goes by Deimos, too."

"And your brother's name is Alexios?"

Kassandra nods. She's starting to get the idea that she might not actually get to Pythagoras today. Deimos has a slow, methodical way of circling around a conversation until she gets to what she really wants to know—Kassandra still isn't sure what she's trying to ask.

"And he's like me?" Deimos asks.

Kassandra lets out a breath. "No, actually," she says. "He _was_ like you, or… you _were_ like him. But you're going in different directions." Guessing what Deimos's next question is going to be, she pulls the bracer off one wrist and turns her arm so Deimos can see the fresh scar there. She has other ones, from her fight on Boeotia, but this is the easiest to get to. "We've been fighting," she says. "But Alexios says things are different with the two of you."

Deimos stands stock still for a long time, as Kassandra wonders if she's even going to answer. She seems to have absolutely no idea how to have a normal conversation. At last, she relaxes enough to say, "The cult wants him dead. The cult in your world probably wants you dead. I'm sure it's nothing personal, if your brother did that to you."

Kassandra almost laughs, except that it's so sad. Besides, she's not sure that it _isn't_ personal—he'd seemed pretty angry when they were shouting at each other in the prison. "So what made you decide to stop fighting Alexios?"

"Pythagoras," Deimos says, which is so obvious that Kassandra has to bite her tongue to stop herself from saying _yes, and?_ She stays totally quiet instead, and eventually Deimos finishes the thought. "I followed Alexios there. He didn't see."

"You were there?" Kassandra asks, startled out of her silence.

"No one saw me," Deimos says. She looks smug for a second, but then it fades. "Except Pythagoras. He knew I was there, and he told me about his crazy ancient people theories, and what our blood really means." She looks miserable. "The cult… they always… I'm supposed to be _special_. A demigod."

Kassandra is aware of this. Her brother has screamed things like it at her enough times by now that it's thoroughly stuck in her mind.

"Pythagoras thinks I'm a waste," she says. "He says I'm a dead end in the bloodline, and everything I'm doing is just— _pointless_." She sits down on the ground, looking thoroughly glum. "I wanted to kill him when he first said it. I don't know why I didn't."

Kassandra crouches in front of her, trying to figure out what to say. She… she _really_ wishes she was having this conversation with her brother, but this will have to do. "It's hard to not believe him," she says softly. "When you're standing down there, in the doorway to Atlantis, it's hard not to believe him."

"Exactly," Deimos says. "That's _exactly_ it. But—" She covers her face and groans. "I should have just killed him anyway. I didn't want to hear—"

"But you did," Kassandra says. "And listen. I don't think your blood matters as much as Pythagoras does, or as much as the cult does. But I think you could be doing better than you are now."

"I'm _not._ " Deimos says. "A _waste_."

And Kassandra hears the hatred in Deimos's too-familiar voice, almost the same as hers but _off_. She sees Deimos's hands curled up into fists, and realizes the hatred is all directed inward, at herself. She wonders, with a pang, whether her brother is feeling like this, but with no one like Pythagoras to slap some sense into him.

"You're not," she agrees.

Deimos makes a face. "The cult wants me to go to Amphipolis," she says. "They're expecting a battle there."

"You don't have to do what they tell you," Kassandra says, wondering if it's going to do any good.

Deimos's expression is almost painful to look at. She's visibly being torn in two by what should be such an _easy_ decision. It takes all of Kassandra's self control not to shake her, to shout that she shouldn't do whatever the cult wants her to. She can see that more words aren't going to do any good. Deimos is going to have to make up her mind all on her own.

 **-/-**

 **Alexios's Deimos continues to steal my plot and run away in random directions. Also I have now officially finished the main plot of the game, woo hoo! Which means that I now have a pretty firm idea of how this fic is going to end, and I'm guessing there's only going to be one or two chapters.**


	10. Chapter 9

**Spoilers through the end of sequence 8 (or, spoilers through the point where you chase a cultist away from a battle and fight them on a beach)**

 **-/-**

Deimos is angry. Deimos is ready to destroy things, but there is nothing in her father's home for her to destroy. Here, in the shadow of an ancient civilization that doesn't care if she exists, among towering pillars that can't be toppled or broken, Deimos has nothing to lash out at but her father, and nothing to use as a weapon but her words. And she has never been good with words.

"You did this to me," she tells him, jabbing a finger in his direction as she paces back and forth. It is nighttime, almost midnight, and Kassandra has gone somewhere—back to Alexios's ship, she thinks—leaving Deimos alone with the old man deep underground. "You told me these things, you _did_ this."

He watches her, impassive as he leans on his staff. "I told you nothing that wasn't true," he says. The lack of interest in his voice hits Deimos like a whip. It has the same sting, lingers in the same way. Deimos has been beaten and broken and hurt by every imaginable weapon, and she knows the hurt she's feeling now.

"You told me I wasn't important," Deimos says. "You told me I don't matter."

There is so much space between them, fifteen or twenty feet at least, a yawning cavern of nothing. Deimos isn't close enough to see his expression, but she doesn't have to see it to know he's raising his eyebrows. She's seen that look enough times by now to have it memorized. No one has ever looked at her with that mix of disappointment and disapproval. "Like I said," he tells her. "I told you nothing that wasn't true."

"I _matter!_ " Deimos says, and the force of that protest drives her to her knees because the thing is—the thing is, she believes him. From the first time he told her that she's never going to be as important as her brother, Deimos had known he was right. Why not? She's been raised on a steady diet of cultists in masks and secret societies. Pythagoras's gate to Atlantis has all the same trademarks, but _bigger_. He makes the Cult of Kosmos look like children playing dressup.

He makes Deimos feel like a child playing pretend.

She's struggling, really struggling, shoulders heaving as she pants with the effort of absorbing this. Gradually, she realizes he's walking toward her. His footsteps are a distinctive _shuffle-shuffle-clink, shuffle-shuffle-clink_ , as he walks toward her, still using the staff to support himself.

"If you came here for validation, you're wasting your time," he tells her. "Your brother would tell you whatever you need to hear."

"But you'll tell me the truth," Deimos says. She looks up at him, and there's no pity in his face. Alexios would have pitied her, wouldn't he? Is that why she keeps coming back here, instead of looking for him? "Won't you?"

"Yes," he says. "But you don't seem to appreciate it."

"I can't be nothing," she tells him.

"Then go out into the world and be _something_ ," he says impatiently. "You are young and strong, aren't you? There must be no end of ways for you to earn the recognition you crave."

"Is that what you think I should do?" she asks.

He sighs, clearly tired of the conversation. "I never wanted to _be_ a father," he tells her. "I have no advice for you. But for the love of all that is good in this world, Deimos—don't you understand that you will neverbe _anything_ as long as you keep letting other people tell you what to do?"

Deimos has no idea how to respond to the sheer terror of answering to no one but herself. Alexios does it. He does whatever he decides to do, travels the whole Greek world on a quest of his own. All Deimos has ever had is the cult.

The cult.

Suddenly, she knows where she wants to be. "There's going to be a fight in Amphipolis," she informs him. Pythagoras makes no effort to pretend he cares, but that doesn't stop her from explaining the rest. "The cult… what's left of it, now that Alexios has been chasing us—th… _them_ down. They want to make a last stand there. They want me to go there and win their war for them." And although no one's put it into actual words, she knows they want her to kill Alexios too, when he inevitably finds his way there. "I'm not going to do that." The words are a forbidden thrill on her tongue.

"Then go," he says, which Deimos thinks means _get out of here_. "Do what you want."

Deimos hesitates before saying the words that are going to change everything. "I want to fight with my brother."

-/-

The battle on Amphipolis has been raging for what seems like forever, and Kassandra is panting, muscles straining as she tries to keep going. The only other fight that's been anything like this was the battle she fought in Boeotia, when her brother kidnapped her and took her away to Athens' prison.

And, as if her memories of him had summoned him, she looks across a sea of fighters to see Deimos stalking his way across the battlefield. He doesn't seem to have noticed her yet, but he's noticed someone _else_.

"Brasidas!" Kassandra shouts, but her voice is snatched away by the tide of battle and carried away from them. " _Brasidas!"_

It's too late. Her brother is on top of him, a hurricane of steel, and Kassandra winces as she watches Deimos's spear go right through her friend's skull. This shouldn't have been his fight in the first place, it should have come down to Kassandra and her brother. Brasidas…

Deimos looks up, blood and brains dripping off his spear as he yanks it away from Brasidas, and spots Kassandra. Their eyes meet, and the rest of the battle seems to fade away. It doesn't matter anymore. Kassandra hefts Leonidas's spear, shifting the familiar grip until it's in a better position. Then she walks forward, toward her brother.

It's a miracle maybe that no one tries to take a swipe at her on her way over, but then again Deimos is headed straight for her. No one in their right mind would want to go anywhere _near_ him when he gets that look in his eyes.

No one except Kassandra, who has no other choice.

She feels herself speeding up, and raises her arm with Leonidas's spear to block his incoming blow—

But it never has a chance to land. Instead, before Deimos can even get to her, he suddenly falls, face forward, into the mud. Kassandra stumbles to a stop, Leonidas's spear still half raised, confused. Her eyes flick down to Deimos, who is twitching feebly in the mud in front of her, and then up again at _Kleon_ in the middle distance. He has the distinctly twitchy attitude of someone that's realizing they've just made a mistake. She's too far away to hear him, but she sees his mouth move.

"Oh shit," he says. Then he drops his bow and runs, with Kassandra chasing after him. She chases him away from the battlefield and down, until he gets to a beach that won't let him run any farther. Kassandra comes closer, pacing a few feet in front of him in case he wants to try and run.

"You and your cult," she says quietly.

"Kassandra—"

" _You and your cult_ ," she says again, raising her voice. "You just want to take everything away from me, don't you? And what's next? How much are you going to take from Athens, from _Greece_?"

He doesn't give her an answer, and to be fair Kassandra doesn't give him much of a chance. Kleon dies, and the cult of Kosmos loses another member.

-/-

Alexios fights in the battle at Amphipolis. It's hot, and horrible, and a lot of people die. Brasidas dies, at the hands of a soldier that gets in a lucky strike just before Brasidas would have turned around and killed _him_.

Kleon dies too, and Alexios… he wishes that he could have been the one to make the killing blow. He'd caught sight of the man about halfway through the battle, and after a feeble attempt from Kleon to attack him, the two of them run, Alexios chasing Kleon, all the way from the battlefield to a nearby beach, where Deimos is waiting.

Alexios sees her first, and freezes. She looks utterly calm, at peace even. She's not looking at him or at Kleon, and instead standing at the edge of the water, letting the ebb and flow of the tide lap against her boots.

When Kleon finally notices her, it's already too late. Deimos turns, and in one fluid motion, stabs a dagger into his chest. Alexios feels his mouth drop open, and watches as Deimos catches him, lowers him to the ground. There's an intensity to her actions and to her expression that catches Alexios by surprise. She looks more… real, somehow. Less like an angry, violent shell and more like his little sister.

"Deimos?" he says, when he's sure Kleon is dead, and that he's not… interrupting.

There's a long pause, and then Alexios hears, very faintly, "…get one, don't I?"

"What?" Alexios says. He has no idea what to say or do.

Deimos looks up at him, absent mindedly rubbing blood off her hands. Her eyes are wide. "I said, I get one, don't I?" She gestures to Kleon. "The cult is almost gone, you've killed pretty much everyone, and I… I wanted to help with that."

Slowly, the way he would approach an injured animal, Alexios creeps closer. Kneels down next to her, and holds… he holds his hand out over her shoulder. All this time, she's seemed so large, somehow, and now…

While he's still crouching there with his hand hovering awkwardly over her like he's scared she's going to burn him, she looks up, sees his hand, and bumps her shoulder into it. From anyone else, Alexios would have assumed it was meant to send him away. From her, from the way she lingers, he thinks he gets the message.

The second he puts his hand down, and they touch, the tears start. Deimos alone at first, a quiet sniffling that grows as Alexios stays absolutely stock still and tries to figure out how to handle this. "I'm not worthless," she tells him. "I'm done with them. I want to _mean_ something."

Which is when Alexios feels the tears start in his eyes too. "You do," he tells her. "You have meant something to our family since the day you were born."

Later, looking back, he'll realize that this is the moment that he got his sister back. But right now there's too much to think about and deal with to take a big picture view. Deimos cries until she starts to shake, at which point Alexios takes charge and pulls her to her feet. "Come on," he says.

"I—"

"Come _on_ ," he says again, more firmly this time, standing up. "We can't stay here on the beach all night." It's already starting to get dark, and the sounds of the battle faded away a long time ago. It's a surprise no one else has wandered down here yet, and recognized them.

Alexios glances down at himself and then her— _he's_ wearing mercenary's armor, and a mix of his weapons and Kassandra's. Deimos, on the other hand, has her distinctive golden armor on. "Do you think you could get that off?"

So there they are on the beach, only a few feet away from the body of the leader of Athens, a member of the cult of Kosmos, stripping Deimos down to just the tunic and small clothes she's wearing under her cultist armor. She's shivering by the end of it, and Alexios is hurrying her back to the _Adrestia_ when a thought occurs to him.

There's at _least_ a fifty percent chance that he's going to switch with Kassandra tonight, and now that he has his sister back… she doesn't have her brother, does she? Beyond his own rising contentment at the way things are working out, he can feel nothing but exhaustion and worry from Kassandra.

"There's something I need to explain to you," he tells Deimos, pulling her up sharply before they can get to the ship. "Do you remember when, ah—" How is he supposed to phrase this? "So there's this… you, but not you…"

"I remember," she says, giving him a confused look that he fully deserves. "What _was_ that?"

It takes a very long time to explain.

-/-

When Kassandra meets with Alexios and Ikaros later that night, the first thing she says is, _I think he's dead._

 _Your—_

 _Deimos,_ she says. _Yea._

There's a long silence between them, in which Kassandra is simultaneously aware of her own body (breathing deep, trying to stay calm) and her mind (safe, up here in the air). She's exhausted, and she doesn't know where to go from here, and…

 _Mine's on the ship,_ Alexios says. _She's coming home._

Kassandra doesn't know why her first reaction is surprise. They're so separate now, so out of sync, and she knows that his Deimos has been talking to people that hers hasn't. Her first reaction _shouldn't_ be surprise, but she's relieved that at least her second reaction is to congratulate him.

 _That's great,_ she tells him. _It's over for you. You got her back._

 _She's coming home,_ Alexios says, and Ikaros gives a long and happy shriek.

But Kassandra can't keep her feelings hidden for long, not from him, and after a second he says, _You said…. You think he's dead?_

 _Kleon shot him,_ Kassandra says. _And then I left him. I ran after Kleon, and I left him._

 _Kassandra…_

 _I left him, Alexios! You have your sister back, and mine's—I left him in the mud in the middle of the battlefield and he_ must _be dead by now._

 _Kassandra._

His voice is like a rock, steady as anything, calm and reassuring. Kassandra clings to it, and he doesn't even need to say another word. Just that alone is enough to break through the panic she can feel closing in on her, but he keeps going anyway. _Maybe he's dead, maybe he isn't. But you can't give up on him, and… even if the worst happens, if he's dead, or if he won't leave the cult, we're stuck together now. For better or for worse, right? You're not going to be alone._

And as Kassandra comes back to her own body, on the deck of the _Adrestia_ , she knows it's true. She really isn't alone. She has a family. Here, on the ship. In Sparta, with her mater. And in another world, with Alexios.

She just sort of wishes she could have rescued her brother here, too.

 **-/-**

 **One Deimos down, one to go. :) I'm just... honestly, I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to save him, you know? It feels cheap at this point to spend actual time with Alexios's Deimos, and explain how she went from cultist to confused to saved, and then just be like 'yea! And... the other Deimos is okay too...' He hasn't earned it, and to be honest I kind of like the ending in mind for the outcome where he's not saved...**


	11. Chapter 10

**Spoilers up through the ending of the main story (not the 'cult' ending or the Atlantis ending). Those come in the next chapter.**

 **-/-**

When Kassandra opens her eyes the next morning, it's still dark. The _Adrestia_ is an oddly peaceful point in time and space, and as Kassandra stirs herself, she doesn't have to think about her brother, or time travel, or other worlds. It doesn't matter quite yet where she is, or what world, or what she's going to do about her brother.

She sits up and enjoys the luxury of having time on her own to wake up gradually, stretching her tired muscles and listening to the water against the side of the ship. No one else is awake yet, and for a few moments she just has peace.

"…Kassandra?"

Or maybe she's not the only one awake. She turns to follow the voice, and her eyes widen as she sees—

"Deimos?" she asks, taking in the younger woman in front of her. Deimos is wearing worn leather armor, nothing that shines, and it's more like looking in a mirror than it's ever been before. This could have been Kassandra, six or seven years ago.

"Alexios told me you would be here eventually," Deimos says. "And everyone here keeps thinking I'm you. But I didn't think you'd just show up like this."

"I didn't think you'd be here," Kassandra says. She stands, feeling oddly unsafe sitting on the deck with Deimos so close. Alexios had been close to crying tears of joy when they'd talked earlier, but Kassandra has a harder time believing his sister is really everything he thinks she is. The memory of everything her own sibling has done is just too hard to shake off. "I mean, Alexios did tell me you came back with him, but…"

"I decided I was done with he cult," Deimos says. Her voice sounds like she's trying as hard as she can to be brave. "So I came when they called, and instead of fighting with them, I killed Kleon."

"Well," Kassandra says. Words fail her. She doesn't know what to say. "So—so what next? Why are you here? What are you going to _do_?" She can't get over the fact that, if she and Alexios are just alternate versions of each other, than the two versions of Deimos are opposing sides of the same coin as well. And yet her Deimos is so different from this one.

Kassandra must have done something wrong. She must have driven him away. She must have lost her brother because she couldn't do whatever Alexios did.

"I don't know," Deimos says. "I don't know where I go next. I don't know—" Her face twists up with distaste at the uncertainty, and Kassandra isn't sure how to deal with this. She's tired. She feels like she's lost (a fight or a competition or _something_ ), and she doesn't have the emotional energy right now to figure out how to deal with any of this. If she was home, she'd have found somewhere quiet to curl up and cry—she's not a big crier, she hasn't cried since the day she met her brother, but she's so tired.

"I want to stay with Alexios," Deimos says. "I don't know where else to go, or who would even want to see me, other than him…"

The two of them are silent for a long time after that, until Kassandra hears the familiar sound of Ikaros flapping his way toward her. It makes her look up, and as she does, as her gaze travels past Deimos, the thought hits her. This woman is her double, who she could have been if things had all been different. They sit n the same way in the same position, they have the same way of looking at things, half squinting at Ikaros as he flaps toward them …

"You _should_ stay with Alexios," Kassandra tells her, going back to their earlier conversation as Ikaros flies down to land on her shoulder. "I mean, where else would you go?"

"Back to Pythagoras, I guess." Deimos looks flatly unenthusiastic about the idea. "I don't know anyone else, except for cultists."

"Stay with him," Kassandra says. "He'll help you. He'll love to do it."

"How do you know?" Deimos asks. "I have a temper. I'm not easy to get along with. I know it's true, everyone always says it. Why would Alexios want—"

"Because he's your brother," Kassandra says, without giving her a chance to finish. "Because I'd do it in a second for the Deimos in my world. Because you're changing already, I can see it. So stay here, stay with Alexios, meet the people on the _Adrestia_. I think you'll grow, Deimos. I think you'll surprise yourself with the kind of person you can be."

They both look down at the ship's deck, and Kassandra realizes the rest of the crew has started to wake up. Barely a dozen feet away, Barnabas is sitting up and stretching, making no effort to be quiet about it. He obviously catches their matching expressions because he straightens up and waves. "Kassandra," he calls. "Is that you?"

She waves back so she'll be a little less invisible. It makes her feel slightly foolish, but she never knows how to act with Alexios's set of companions. "Yes," she calls back.

"And there are two of you?"

"Deimos is still here too," Kassandra says.

"Hmm," he says, and gives a long suffering sigh as he gets to his feet. "Well, alright then."

He doesn't seem to mind her being there too much, so Kassandra turns to Deimos and says, "See? Progress."

She looks... well, honestly, she looks so delighted with this revelation that Kassandra feels bad for her.

-/-

It's several days later when Alexios suggests to his sister that he take her home for the first time.

"To Sparta?" she asks. "Is that home for you?"

"It's—" Well, it's not, really. It's just the place where he was born. But his mother is back there, and she doesn't even know… any of it. How or why Deimos has been saved, or even that she _has_ been saved. "It's complicated."

"Is anything ever not?" Deimos complains, making a face.

"Not in my experience," Alexios admits. "Not in our family, anyway." Again, he remembers his mother. "And speaking of—mater is waiting in Sparta."

"Oh," Deimos says, with a curious lilt in her voice.

"You don't want to see her?" Alexios asks.

"Well," Deimos says. "If she's anything like Pythagoras—"

"No," Alexios says, shutting that down immediately. "She's not a hundred year old and…" He struggles for the right word.

"Complicated?" Deimos provides.

"Complic—"

He stops abruptly, thrown off balance as a wave of anger and fear and overwhelming _sadness_ comes at him from Kassandra.

"Alexios?" Deimos asks, and if he wasn't suddenly so concerned for Kassandra, he'd have noticed and been pleased by how worried she sounds. "Are you alright?"

"Something's going on with Kassandra," Alexios says, and just like that—there's a crumbling feeling in his gut as he's pulled away from his own world and into Kassandra's. They've switched plenty of times by now, but it usually happens at night, and when they're both asleep.

This is different, first because Alexios is conscious when it's happening, and second because (his first impression is his own face in front of him, expression twisted into a mask of anger), his second impression is Kassandra, more upset than he's ever seen her before.

They've only done this once before—been in the same world at the same time. Only then they'd been in _his_ world, facing _his_ sister, and now they're in _her_ world, facing _her_ brother. Alexios already knows that Kassandra is upset and stressed, of course, but it takes him a couple of seconds to figure out what's going on.

They're (his stomach flips) on the cliff where all their lives had changed forever. Alexios can't help but take a second just to plant his feet firmly on the ground and make sure he's nowhere near the edge. Then he looks up, and around, at Kassandra in front of him, fighting her brother, and their mother several meters behind them, looking as shocked as she deserves to be in this situation.

There's no time to talk, because after an all too brief pause where Deimos stares stupidly at him, he redoubles his efforts to stab his sword straight through Kassandra. Alexios jumps into the fray without waiting for an explanation. He's not going to wait and let him kill Kassandra.

" _Thank you_ ," Kassandra gasps, as they press the attack. She sounds ragged, while Deimos still looks fine.

"How _dare_ you?" Deimos roars, and Alexios flinches as the full might of his alter ego is directed at him. He has to roll backward out of the way of a sudden, wild sword slash, and he only avoids the follow up swing because Kassandra jumps in to block Deimos's sword with hers.

"How dare you wear my face!" Deimos roars, and as he looks up, Alexios gets only a second to take in the confused, almost crushed look on Deimos's face. It doesn't match the anger in his voice, and it makes Alexios feel infinitely sad for him—his sister has the same problem sometimes. She gets angry because… it's the only emotion she knows how to handle.

It's different here. Alexios can talk to his sister, it's a struggle but even after only a few days he can talk her down when she flies into a temper. This Deimos is so far beyond that… there's nothing Alexios can do but help Kassandra fight. And anyway, he knows that Kassandra would never have resorted to a fight in the first place if she'd had any other choice.

Together, they beat Deimos back. He's cursing and raving the whole way, nearly frothing at the mouth, and then finally Kassandra gets in what almost seems like a lucky hit. She's still gasping for breath, struggling to breathe through what Alexios knows are tears (he can feel her grief and frustration so strongly through their bond that Alexios can _taste_ the tears she's trying to swallow). Her blade strikes true, and Deimos goes down hard onto one knee.

"Don't do this," Kassandra says. "You don't have to fight, you—you crazy, malakas—"

"You're the crazy one," Deimos says, and his eyes keep flicking to Alexios. "Who _are_ you?" His blade comes at Alexios, who parries it back again and again. " _Who are you?"_

"Will you just listen?" Alexios demands, but Deimos _won't_ listen. He is so unbelievably angry, and he just won't listen. Finally, Alexios loses his temper too, and with Kassandra's help he manages to bring Deimos down to the ground, where he can pin him down.

Deimos curses at him.

"Listen to me," Alexios says. "You don't have to do this, _you can be better_. I know that you're—" He has to dodge a kick that would have hurt him a lot worse than it would have hurt Kassandra. "You're capable of more than this anger, and the cult—"

"The cult is _all_ I have," Deimos spits at him. He can actually fell flecks of spittle hitting his cheeks. "They are my family, they _worship_ me—" He lunges forward, almost managing to grab at Alexios's sword. They struggle, quick and vicious and silent, and in the end, as Alexios jerks the blade forward…

"Alexios," Kassandra whispers.

They both stare at the place where the blade had gone into Deimos's body. His chest rises one more time, then falls… and he's gone. Just like that. A swirl of confused emotions rise up at once in Alexios, and he suddenly wants to vomit as he stares at… essentially, this is his own corpse. And this is his sister's alternate self, he clearly hadn't been beyond redemption.

Fingers suddenly grasp his hand, and Alexios turns to see Kassandra reaching for him. With an effort, Alexios manages to calm the wild emotions clamoring for control inside of him, and make enough room to check and see what Kassandra is feeling.

Relief. Nothing but exhausted relief.

"It's over," she whispers. "He's gone."

"He was your brother," Alexios says doubtfully. "Are you sure… this is what you wanted?"

"It was different with him," Kassandra says. "Different than with your sister. You never saw him before today, you never saw the way he looked at me, or the things he said… I tried, Alexios, but… things never worked out the same here. I don't think… I think it was too late for him to be saved. And if this is the only way he can find peace, then at least there's that." Her voice is suddenly smaller and quieter than Alexios is used to hearing. "And I didn't have to do it myself."

Alexios is sort of reeling from the surreal experience of having just stabbed _himself_ , but his first instinct is to reach out for Kassandra and just… he puts his arm around her shoulders and she's right there next to him. It's weirdly a relief, because he's just killed her brother and she's still… _here_ , she's still next to him, she's still the best and closest family that he has in his life.

"I'm sorry," he tells her, closing his eyes against the sight of the body.

"He didn't…" She breathes out, a long, low sigh, and then back in, a ragged gasping breath. "He didn't give us any _choice_."

"I think… _he_ didn't have any choice," Alexios says quietly. It's what he's going to have to keep telling himself from now on. He's going to have to keep reminding himself that this isn't… what this Deimos had been isn't something that he can ever become. Deimos had gotten a bad start in life, and he hadn't met Pythagoras, or anyone _else_ that would give him a choice of what to do in his life.

"Kassandra!"

It occurs to Alexios that someone has been trying to get their attention for a while. He and Kassandra both turn around, and Alexios winces when he sees the look on Kassandra's mother's face.

She starts to speak. "Mater—"

"What is going _on_?"

And just then, at the worst possible moment, their switch completes and Kassandra is sent off to Alexios's world, leaving him standing alone over the corpse of his alternate self. He and Kassandra have tried to keep... _everything_ a secret from their respective mothers so far, but clearly the time for secret keeping has passed. The woman in front of him (not his mother, no matter how much she might look like her, _Kassandra's mother_ ) is looking at him with some kind of mix of horror and hope.

"I can explain," he says, although his heart is aching and he really doesn't want to. "It's… a long story, but I can explain." He swallows hard, and then admits, "I just... don't think you'll like hearing what I have to say."

 **-/-**

 **Well... I was going to make this the last chapter, but honestly I got this far, and looked at how much I still wanted to cram into the ending, and thought about how long it was going to take me (honestly guys, I mostly write at night and every time I've tried to write lately I've just passed out immediately. I keep waking up with 100+ page word documents full of whatever letter I had my finger on when I fell asleep), and decided to split this chapter into two. Sorry to make you wait longer!**


	12. Chapter 11

**Spoilers for the whole main plot of the game. Just the whooooole thing, so finish the story before reading this.**

 **-/-**

In the days and weeks that follow, Kassandra's life takes on more and more of a surreal quality. Everyone knows, now, about Alexios. Everyone that matters, anyway. Phoibe, Herodotos, Barnabas, and the rest of the crew. Her mater, and then later Nikolaos as well, and someone even tells _Stentor_ , when he follows Nikolaos back to Sparta.

Her connection with Alexios is less stable than it's ever been, as he helps his sister adjust to life outside the cult, and Kassandra helps her mater to bury her brother, then goes traveling aboard the _Adrestia_ again. Their lives are disconnected, and sometimes it feels like they'll never be able to synch up again.

Their journey is over, that's the problem. The Greek world isn't at peace, it sometimes feels like it never will be again, but there's nowhere else for them to go. Alexios has found his family, and Kassandra has destroyed hers, so—

No, no. _No_ , she has to remind herself, that's not true. Her brother is dead but there are still so many people in her life that care for her. She'll heal, in time. She'll figure out how to keep going now that she knows her brother is gone and never coming back. It'll just take… a while. It's going to definitely take a while.

She's vaguely aware of Alexios coming closer, but doesn't consciously register it until Ikaros perches on a low branch nearby and makes a rude chirping noise at her. Still, Kassandra eyes him warily. She's not sure if she wants to talk to Alexios right now. They've barely said anything to each other since Deimos died, because (if she's being honest with herself), she… she blames him. Just a little bit.

As always, she buries that little piece of honesty away as quickly as she can. She doesn't want Alexios to know. He feels what she feels, and she doesn't want him to feel… _that_.

She can't just ignore him, so she sits herself down and joins Alexios and Ikaros.

Instantly, Alexios says _, I'm sorry, Kassandra. I know it isn't fair—_

 _You only did what you had to do._ It's the same thing she's been telling him since it happened. It probably needed to happen, and she might even have done the same thing, if she'd had enough time to think… but that doesn't mean she's accepted it yet.

 _It's still not fair,_ Alexios says. _It's still not… right._

 _It was what you had to do,_ Kassandra says, repeating herself.

 _Kassandra._ She can feel him… sort of pressing close, hesitant but desperate for her to talk to him. She sighs, and lets her defenses drop.

 _I'm sorry,_ she tells him. _I'm just… struggling. I'm never going to see him again, Alexios. He's never going to have a chance to come around, he's never going to get a second chance. And he was trying to kill… he was trying to kill_ both _of us, I completely believe you did what you had to do, I just wish you_ hadn't _had to._

Alexios is silent, thinking about this for a while, while Alexios stretches his wings and takes them up to the sky in slow, leisurely movements.

 _But you're still here_ , Kassandra says. _And I really want to get over what happened because… I don't want to lose you the way I lost him. But all I've been doing is sitting around, thinking about it—_

 _I've been thinking about it too,_ Alexios says. _And I have an idea for something that might help you feel better._

… _do you?_ Kassandra asks, after a pause.

 _I have one cultist left,_ Alexios says. _The leader of the whole group. I—well, it's not safe to assume our worlds are the same anymore, but you're in the same place, right?_

 _One cultist left, you mean?_ Kassandra asks, grudgingly allowing herself to be interested. _Yes._

 _I got some intelligence that she's going to be back in that cave,_ Alexios says. _The one where we first saw the cult, and met… met Deimos._

As if Kassandra will ever forget that cave. _You're sure?_ She asks.

 _Positive._

 _Then you're right,_ Kassandra says. _I think this will make me feel better._

 _I was going to look into it myself,_ Alexios says. _But you're already on the_ Adrestia _, you're much closer, and I don't think I'd make it in time._

 _That's okay,_ Kassandra says. She actually feels a little bit better, now that she has a goal again, and something to work toward. _I'll go, I'll do what I can—_ It won't matter now, when they're already so out of synch— _and I'll at least let you know what I see._

 _Thanks,_ Alexios says, and then there's an awkward silence between them. Kassandra can feel it stretching out between them like some horrible wall. She knows Alexios feels guilty, not just for killing her brother, but for having his sister. She's not going to let that happen. She's not.

 _Alexios…_

 _Yes?_

She feels her body take a deep breath, and then launches into it. _I know we've changed a lot, and this journey… it didn't turn out at all how we thought it would when we left Kephallonia. But I don't… I don't blame you for any of it, I really don't. And if this is how our lives are going to be from now on, switching back and forth and everything, then I'm… I'm okay with that. We'll help Deimos adjust to normal life, and—_

 _Kassandra._

 _Yes?_

 _Are you trying to convince me, or yourself?_

 _You,_ Kassandra says. _I guess. I feel like I've been cutting myself off lately, but—that's over. I want it to be over. My brother is gone, but I still have you._

 _Well,_ Alexios says _. You can stop trying. I'm convinced._

And the wall between them fades. It's like it used to be, the two of them and Ikaros united against a world that _still_ doesn't make any sense. They linger for a moment, and then let their consciousnesses separate. It's fine. Everything is going to be fine.

She believes this, she genuinely does, until she gets back to the cave in Delphi. There's nothing in particular there to make her feel uneasy, but—somehow she does anyway. Something about just being back here, where everything first started to change, makes butterflies start to flutter in her stomach.

-/-

A world away, Alexios is walking through Sparta with Deimos, when he feels Kassandra start to panic. He knows she'd been close to the cultist cave the last time he saw her, and that she might even be there by now. He stops in place, trying to focus on helping her calm.

"Alexios?" Deimos asks. "What's wrong?"

(that's new, in and of itself—Deimos is still getting used to learning how to notice how other people are feeling, much less how she's supposed to react to them)

"Kassandra," Alexios says, without elaborating. He can't help wanting to protect Deimos from any reminder of the cultists.

"Oh," Deimos says. "Sure, okay." And she stops too, giving her most intimidating glare to anyone that gets too close to them. It lets Alexios shut his eyes, and block out the world while he focuses on reminding Kassandra that she's not alone.

-/-

Kassandra feels Alexios urging her on, and with his encouragement she's able to push back the butterflies and descend into the cave. She tries to stay quiet, but every footstep echoes in the cavernous space, and eventually she gives up. If the last cultist is here—and she trusts Alexios's word—it's too late to try and hide.

But the meeting space is empty when Kassandra gets there. The only thing of any interest whatsoever is the glowing outline where the pyramid had been built the last time Kassandra was here. With the artifacts gone, the pyramid is just formed of four lines reaching up to a common point, shining even though there's no source of light and nothing to hold it up.

The first time she'd been here, Kassandra hadn't had anything to compare it to. She does now, though—it reminds her of Pythagoras, and the artifacts he'd sent her to collect. Kassandra hesitates a second, but there's no one else here and nothing much to look at, so she walks over to the pyramid.

She _almost_ doesn't touch it, because one of the many hard lessons she's learned over the past few months is not to trust things like this. But…

Last time, she'd seen Alexios. That's it. So this thing can't be entirely bad.

She does a second check just to make sure the place really is empty, and sees nothing and no one. Satisfied, and feeling like she has to do _something_ after coming all this way, Kassandra reaches out and touches the pyramid.

This time, she doesn't see Alexios.

She sees other things. Pythagoras, speaking to her. Images, visions, of places she's been, things she's done, and places so far away and in the future that she can barely wrap her mind around them. Knowledge. A mission. A crushing burden to bear, and a necessary mission.

-/-

All this knowledge comes through to Alexios, instantly and completely. He's used to getting emotions from Kassandra, and thoughts when they're together with Ikaros. This isn't like that. The vision she's seeing plays out across the inside of his mind, as crystal clear as if he was looking through her eyes.

"Will you stop _doing_ that?" Deimos asks—Alexios opens his eyes, and realizes he's stopped dead in his tracks for a second time.

"Sorry," he says. "I—"

"Kassandra again?"

"Yes. Sort of. I…" He takes a few steps to catch up to her. "We need to go."

"Why?" she asks. "Kassandra's in another world, how are we going to help her?"

"We're not going to see Kassandra," Alexios says. "We're going to see Pythagoras."

"Oh," Deimos says. "Really? Why?" She hurries after him, and Alexios only realizes when she breaks into a half run that he's going much too fast.

"Because he has a _lot_ of questions to answer," Alexios says.

-/-

Kassandra isn't worried about Pythagoras right at that moment. As she shakes off the last of the vision, she's worried about the footsteps she can suddenly hear, coming down the passage behind her. She turns around, and her eyes go wide. It's a day for revelations, apparently.

"Aspasia," she says, and the world… seems to shimmer. There's still a sort of power coursing through her, and Kassandra is seeing double. As Aspasia stops in front of her, she sees a second version of her walk around to the far side of the pyramid, examining it. Kassandra focuses on the one that's facing her.

"Kassandra," Aspasia says. She sounds tired. She looks tired too, actually. "I didn't expect to see you here."

Responding that she hadn't expected to see Aspasia seems like an understatement. Kassandra cuts right to the chase instead. "You're one of them," she says. "You're a cultist?"

"I was," Aspasia says. "But I've come to realize that the cult has gone badly astray in recent years. It needed to be cleansed, and you have been a great help in doing that. I have to thank you for helping me to clean house. But now I can—"

"Did you know about my brother?" Kassandra asks.

"Yes, of course—"

Again, Kassandra doesn't let her finish. "Did you know what was happening to him? How he grew up?"

"Yes, but—"

Kassandra runs her through. In one movement, she pulls out her sword and jams it as far as she can into Aspasia. "Don't even finish whatever excuses you were trying to give me," she hisses, bending over the woman as she falls to the ground. "Don't try to tell me that you're different from the rest of the cult. You're just the same as them."

She waits just long enough to hear Aspasia's dying gasps before she spins around and—just for good measure—repeats the movement on the second, ghostly Aspasia. She's not entirely sure what's going on with her, but she has an idea that… well, the last time she was here, she'd seen across universes to Alexios. It only makes sense that touching the pyramid would let her see another Aspasia from another world.

And it only makes sense that this Aspasia has to die as well.

The only doubt Kassandra has about what she's going to do is whether her weapon will be able to do any damage to someone that doesn't even exist in her world—at the last second, on a whim, she simply drops her sword and pulls out her spear. It's an artifact too, isn't it?

And it's enough. The spear drives through Aspasia, and for a moment Kassandra feels resistance as the woman drops to the ground. Then the vision, or visitation, or whatever it is fades. Kassandra falls to her knees, panting hard even though she's been through _much_ harder fights than this one without breaking a sweat. It's over. Her brother is gone, he's never coming back. But now, neither is the cult.

She stays on the ground, hard stone ground digging into her knees, for what feels like hours but can't possibly be. Finally she stands up and heads for the exit. She has questions about the vision she saw from the pyramid. She's going to see Pythagoras.

-/-

Alexios makes it there first, with Deimos, but he insists they don't go in until Kassandra is there too.

"Do you want me to come with you?" Deimos asks. She looks torn about the whole idea, and Alexios hesitates.

"You don't have to," he says. "But I'm not going to tell you no, either."

She thinks about it for a long time. For days, actually, as they camp out on the island and wait for Kassandra to come. It's a surprisingly peaceful interlude, actually. They go hunting, and Alexios tells his sister stories about his family—their mater, and Nikolaos, and even their famous grandfather Leonidas. Probably unsurprisingly, Deimos likes these violent, bloody stories of a doomed last stand best of all.

"I'll go in with you," she finally informs Alexios, on the day he tells her Kassandra is almost there.

"To see Pythagoras?"

"Yes," Deimos says. "I can handle it."

Alexios isn't sure if _he_ can handle it. Pythagoras is infuriating at the best of times, and this is definitely not the best of times. But at least they'll all be there together. All the surviving siblings from both worlds. When Kassandra's _Adrestia_ docks later that afternoon, he nudges Deimos into motion and starts heading toward the entrance. The closer they get, the more _real_ the idea of Kassandra in his mind seems to get, until when they finally arrive she's real and solid.

He does a double take when he sees her. It's been a while, and there's something different about her. There's still a sadness behind her eyes that Alexios knows he can't touch, but she's standing straighter and there's a fire there too.

"You look better," he tells her.

"The cult is gone," Kassandra says. "Aspasia was the leader, and she's gone now. In my world and in yours, I think."

"Aspasia?" Alexios says.

"Wait," Deimos says. "Her, really?"

Alexios and Kassandra both turn to her, and Alexios says, "How do you not know who was in the cult?"

"Everybody wore masks," Deimos says defensively. "And I didn't spend that much time with, you know. Normal people. Not like I do now."

Alexios makes a mental note that if Deimos thinks he and Kassandra are normal people, he might need to make more of an effort to introduce her to some new acquaintances. Then he turns back to Kassandra. "How did you kill both of them?"

"I don't exactly know," Kassandra says. "The same way I saw you—both of you, actually—when we infiltrated that meeting."

"I'm glad you didn't stab me, then," Deimos says, as the three of them walk farther in, toward where Pythagoras is no doubt waiting. "If you can just… stab people in other universes there."

"Deimos," Kassandra says, with feeling. "I would not have dared to stab you."

Alexios has spotted Pythagoras by this point, and he nudges the girls toward him. The old man takes a few seconds to stir when they come close, but he does eventually manage to focus on them.

"Look at this," he says. "Three visitors all at once."

"We're looking for answers," Kassandra says, taking the lead. "About that message you left in the artifact in—"

"It's a little more complicated than just leaving a message," Pythagoras says, waving a hand dismissively. "You wouldn't understand."

Kassandra blows out a breath. Alexios feels her impatience. "Alright," he says. "But whatever you did, we need an explanation. What _was_ that?"

He seems to grow more serious. "The world," he announces somberly. "Is not ready for the secrets of Atlantis. But you… one of you… needs to carry this staff into the future." He hefts his staff, and looks between Kassandra and Alexios. "It is time for me to pass the torch to one of you," he says. "One of you must carry the burden of knowledge into the future, when humanity will need to enter Atlantis again, when they might even be ready for it."

"Wait," Alexios says. " _Wait_. You want us to take that thing and wait for… however long it takes for Atlantis to need to be opened again? That could take… I don't know, decades. Centuries, maybe."

"No," Pythagoras says.

"It won't take that long?" Kassandra asks.

"It certainly will," Pythagoras says. "And not just hundreds of years—thousands. But I meant no, I don't want the two of you to take the staff. I'm running out of time I can continue to use it. It… _knows_ that it's time to pass it on. It won't let me hold onto it for long when it wants to be passed on to one of you." He pauses, then emphasizes, " _One_ of you. Kassandra, Alexios… one of you is going to have to agree to do this. One of you is going to have to live and die here while the other one lives on."

"What?" Alexios demands.

" _No_ ," Kassandra says. "Our lives are out of synch enough as it is—"

"That will only be a problem as long as both of you are alive," Pythagoras says. "Maybe four or five decades at most."

"And then we'll never see each other again," Alexios says numbly. He can't believe this is an option, something they're actually _talking_ about like it's reasonable. "We're not doing that."

"We're _not_ ," Kassandra says.

"Somebody has to," Pythagoras says. His eyes bore first into Kassandra, and then Alexios. "You both saw what's going to happen in the future."

Alexios shifts uncertainly. There had been something urgent and dangerous in the vision he'd seen when Kassandra touched the pyramid. Pythagoras has a point, but… he doesn't want to be the one to carry the staff that far into the future. Somebody has to, but he really doesn't want it to be him. He doesn't want it to be Kassandra, either.

He doesn't know what other choice they have.

Then Deimos stepped forward. " _I_ have an idea," she says, and then she explains. Alexios and Kassandra argue at first, but Deimos is more certain than Alexios has ever seen her. Eventually, they give in.

-/-

The alarm on the animus beeps in Layla's ear, and the simulation ends. She groans and tries to fight it—she's so close to the end, she _needs to know how this ends_ —but one of the conditions she'd had to agree to before coming down was to program the animus to shut down every so often, so she can walk around and avoid bleeding. It just has _horribly bad timing_ in this particular case.

Layla's not going to be allowed back into the animus for a solid hour. Enough time to get herself something to eat, check in with her team, use the bathroom, and queue up another memory. Or, she could spend the hour stomping around and cursing in as many languages as she knows, because none of that had made any sense at all.

Alexios, or Kassandra, whichever one of them is _real_ (and she still can't tell, not exactly, whose memories she's been watching), is supposed to be carrying that staff to the future? How far into the future? A hundred years? Two hundred? Pythagoras would have been over a century old, could Alexios or Kassandra have managed that too? Or—

She stops pacing when she hears footsteps on the floor behind her, and after an embarrassing second of doing absolutely nothing, Layla turns around. The person she sees behind her makes her jaw actually drop. She knows that face. She knows… but that isn't _possible_.

"Kassandra," she says, in a voice that shakes.

The figure, holding the same staff Layla had seen in the animus with Pythagoras, cocks her head and says, "Do you know, nobody's ever actually called me that."

"What?" Layla asks weakly, as Kassandra (not Kassandra?) starts to walk closer to her. Now that she's closer, Layla can see she's wearing a disturbingly anachronistic hoodie with the name of some college stamped on the front, and blue jeans tucked into sturdy work boots. But her face is the same, even the way she wears her hair is the same. This is either Kassandra, or the bleeding effect has gotten way worse while she's been down here alone.

"I mean," maybe-Kassandra-but-maybe-not says. There's a definite Greek accent when she speaks, but it's English. Modern English too. "Mater did, but no one else ever really got into the habit."

It hits Layla in a flash of understanding. "Deimos," she says.

Not Kassandra— _Deimos_ —smiles coyly at her. "Got it," she says.

"How are you here?" Layla asks. "The staff? _Why_ are you here? Why you, why not—"

"Why do you ask so many questions?" Deimos asks.

"Of course I'm going to ask questions!" Layla bursts out. On the other end of her earbud, the rest of her team is shouting questions at _her,_ too. She tears it out of her ear and stuffs it into a pocket. She needs to focus. "This isn't _possible_ , but you're here! How? Why?"

Deimos thinks about it, then points at the animus. "That thing," she says. "I've been watching while you're in it."

"You have?" Layla asks.

"Very closely. I stand next to you and watch."

"Okay," Layla says. "Creepy."

"Probably." Her grin is equal parts teasing and proud. "But you see Alexios and Kassandra's memories, right?"

The words set off a rush of relief in Layla. Alexios _and_ Kassandra. That means, somehow, that both of them exist. She's seeing two sets of memories. She's not crazy. "Yes."

"So you already know how I'm here," Deimos says. "And why."

Layla's mind races. She's trying to put the pieces together. "Someone had to take the staff out of ancient Greece and into… well, into this time and this world. They thought it had to be Alexios or Kassandra, but you—"

"I said why not have it be me," Deimos finishes. "I have all the right blood too, I can carry the staff. No big deal."

Layla stares at her, utterly lost for words. Deimos is… well, there's a reason Layla had mistaken her for Kassandra at first. Deimos in the animus has always seemed immature. She'd been pettily destructive the first time Alexios met her, and as she freed herself more and more from the cult, she'd gained a kind of childish naivete for all the normal things she'd never gotten to experience before.

This Deimos seems more mature, which probably makes sense. It's been two thousand years. More. "So you've been just… wandering around the world for all this time?"

"What?" Deimos frowns, and there's a little of the same Deimos that Layla had seen in the animus. Yes, she's more mature, but she still has a distinct air about her of being the younger sibling. "No, of course not—I mean, can you _imagine_? That'd be like twenty five hundred years, I'd go crazy, living that long. Or I'd stumble into something dangerous and get myself killed. I'm not _immortal_ , I'm just not getting any older."

"So what have you been doing?" Layla asks.

"I'm here most of the time," Deimos says. "Asleep, or I guess you'd call it being in stasis. I wake up every couple hundred years and I go for a wander. I catch up on the world and learn a couple languages and then I get tired and come back here to sleep. I think… It _feels_ like I only have so much time to live, even with the staff. I didn't want to waste it all too soon, but I also try to get out of here often enough to keep up with what's going on." She grins. "You snuck in while I was out. Probably a good thing, or else you would have been very confused, right?"

"I'm very confused now," Layla says. But then admits, "I would have been _more_ confused at the beginning, though."

"So there you go," Deimos says. "I volunteered to take the staff so my brother and Kassandra wouldn't have to." She sighs, and suddenly looks very much older. Or sadder, anyway. "It worked out. I was the biggest difference between their lives, and when I was focused on the staff, and what Pythagoras left behind—where they could both come see me together—it sort of evened things out. Their lives started to synch back up, and they stopped switching all the time. Made them pretty happy." She grins, but then it fades. "Anyway. That was a long time ago. It's just me left, now."

It occurs to Layla that Deimos might not have just been trying to be creepy when she mentioned that she'd been watching Layla's animus sessions closely. That's her family that Layla's been getting to see.

"And now I think it's time to hand the staff over to you," Deimos says. "It just… feels right."

An electric jolt seems to go through Layla. This is what they've been looking for. This is what they need, an artifact that will give them an advantage over the Templars.

"Here," Deimos says, striding forward. "Take it."

She holds out the staff, and Layla wraps her hand around the shaft, just above Deimos's.

Then she gets a good look at the other woman's face, at the visible sadness there, and says, "You're going to die, aren't you?" It's sheer instinct that makes her ask the question, but if the staff is what has been keeping Deimos arrive—and what else could it have been—losing it will kill her.

"Pythagoras pretty much turned to dust when I took it from him," Deimos says quietly. "And he was younger then than I am now."

Layla thinks about it. She thinks about the hum of power under her hand, and then about Deimos. About how proud of her Alexios had been.

She pulls back from the staff. "Give yourself a life," she says. "Finish school, find people to care about. You still have time to live."

"You're not going to take it?" Deimos asks, and Layla shakes her head.

"Kassandra and Alexios got their happy ending, right?"

Deimos nods. "I got to see it," she says. "Both them." She looks earnestly at Layla. "They didn't abandon me, you know. Even when they could have, after I volunteered to take the staff so neither of them would have to. I was never lonely as long as they were alive."

The unspoken but obvious second half of that thought is that she's been lonely since.

"Well," Layla says. "It's time for you to get a happy ending too, isn't it? You said you feel like you only have so much time left to live, so… live it, okay? You got the staff here, your job is done, it's here when we need it." She points out, in the direction that leads to the surface. "You don't have to be lonely again."

For a long time, she doesn't think Deimos is going to agree. She seems to be struggling to process the idea that she _can_ be normal, that she _can_ have her own life, that she is _done_. Then she nods, and actually leads the way out.

"Come on, then," she calls over her shoulder. "What are you waiting for?"

So Layla scrambles to gather her things, and follows after Deimos. It's a pain to get out of the underwater cave, and when the two women finally break the surface—

An eagle, circling far overhead, shrieks out in a cry of what sounds like joy.

 **-/-**

 **I was not a huge fan of the modern ending, for all kinds of reasons (which is why I ended up making a few changes to it), but I do like the idea of Deimos rolling up in jeans and a sweatshirt like hey what's up? xD**

 **So anyway, there we are. Thank you to everyone that read, and especially to everyone that left kudos and comments, I've really enjoyed poking around in ancient Greece for a while. :)**


End file.
